What Resides Within
by Crazy laughter
Summary: Lelouch dies and the world starts to move towards peace and unification after his funeral. The wounds left by his death are still far from healing when Lelouch wakes up in his own grave and returns to life, but with something foreign growing within him.
1. Resurrection

**First Chapter**

**Resurrection **

**

* * *

  
**

Karen stood there, watching as the ceremonies were carried out without hurry. She stood along the rest of the commanding members of the Black Knights. Ohgi and Toudou stood at her side with their heads respectfully bowed. Rakshata had surprised them by appearing glad in her formal black dress and was now standing next to Karen, smoking her slender pipe, but still she was there in a black dress and for someone who had always stayed horizontal in the midst of battle it was a big gesture. Karen couldn't glance in the direction of Nunnally's crying form without feeling a twinge of guilt. Could there have been something she could have done to stop this from ever happening? Her rational side said that anything she could have done wouldn't have changed anything for the better and it would have probably made things even worse, even if Lelouch were to survive because of those actions. She knew that this was an ending that was best for everyone, but still she felt her eyes water when she looked at the white, royal looking casket and the restful face lying there on softest of white silk.

Yes, of course it would be an open casket funeral; the world had to make sure that the emperor of atrocities, Lelouch vi Britannia, was dead. That thought was what caused the tears to flow and her to try and stop herself from sobbing. Couldn't there really have been any other ending to his life than to be the tyrant that no one would grieve as history moved on? Why couldn't anyone but the people closest to him know what kind of person and how courageous he was?

Karen turned her eyes away and fought back the tears to stop herself from breaking down. She didn't want to disgrace herself in his funeral, or in front of all these people. She kept on watching the people around her, searching for faces she knew. Sumeragi Kaguya was right there next to Nunnally, closest to the casket, trying not to break down in sobs like Karen. The fact that she was succeeding even though she was looking at Lelouch impressed Karen and she found a new kind of respect for the girl. Standing next to her was the small empress of the former Chinese federation, Tianzi, trying her best to comfort her first friend, but seemed to be breaking down in tears herself. Xing Ke was standing next to her with an uncomfortable expression on his face, like he was unsure if he should try and comfort the young girl or not. She also heard Tamaki sniffle behind her, he had actually surprised them all by realizing and accepting what Lelouch had planned the first and he had been the one to explain it to her, even though she had known already, but hadn't accepted it yet.

Karen scanned the crowd for a splash of green hair, but she couldn't see C.C. Well, it was understandable if she didn't want to come to an event with the government present, since she had been imprisoned for research before. Maybe she was just somewhere Karen couldn't see her, it was not like she could pick her out from the crowd gathered to rejoice the Emperor of atrocities' passing.

Damn it, she was about to cry again.

**Lelouch **

Lelouch's consciousness didn't return to him as quickly as it had from the day he became aware of the powers that could want to kill him. He had always been a light sleeper, but after that day he had awoken from the slightest of noise and went back to sleep only when he was sure it was safe. He had been able to sleep during class in Ashford Academy because he knew that no one would be coming after him as Lelouch Lamperouge. First thing he became aware of was the silence, or better yet, the fact that he could not hear, feel or see anything at all. Remembering how he had ended up in this state was

_Heart._

hard. He had a vague feeling of his own body, but he couldn't feel if he was lying or sitting on anything. Was he floating in some liquid that numbed his body? That would explain why he couldn't feel the possible mask that was feeding him oxygen. This could also be the effect of a powerful paralyzing poison, but who had administered it? Had someone poisoned him? Only if he could re-

_Heart. Lungs._

member, then he could think of ways to get out of this situation. No matter how he looked at it he could do nothing else than wait for the drug to lose effect, or that he was freed from whatever tank he might be floating in. The tank seemed more and more improbable, but if he was treated for serious damage to his body, then he might be floating in a regenerative tank, but the cost for maintaining those were astronomical and they wouldn't be used if the patient wasn't a member of royalty. Did this mean that his cover as Lelouch Lamperouge had been blown? Could brain damage explain for his sense of dislocation from his own body and his memory loss?

_Heart, beat. Lungs, breathe._

Suddenly Leouch felt a stabbing pain in his chest and felt like he was suffocating. He inhaled sharply and then continued to breathe rapidly to make the feeling of suffocation go away. The pain in his chest did not subside at all even after he was breathing normally. He tried to move his right hand to grab his chest to see if he was hurt, but he still couldn't feel his body. Was his body paralyzed? Had whatever was making his chest hurt cut his spinal cord? Would he be doomed to live his life inside his own mind, not interacting with the people around him, not even being able to know that they were there?

_Damaged. Stop._

Lelouch suddenly realized he had stopped breathing. He didn't feel air filling his lungs, he only felt as his last inhale slowly escaped through his lips and then even that ghost of a sensation disappeared. The pain in his chest had given him a strong sense of déjà vu, but he just couldn't remember completely before the pain disappeared. Had he been shot?

_No oxygen. Have to leave, find refuge. Eat, heal._

Lelouch's eyes opened even though he made no attempt to open them and he saw some kind of fabric an inch away from his face. He raised his hand against the fabric and felt that there was something harder behind it, perhaps even steel. He tried reaching above his head but met cushioned wall, he checked if the place he was in was open from the side of his feet. There had to be light coming in here from somewhere if he could see. His foot met only another cushioned wall. He was in a box that barely gave him room to move. Where was the light coming from then?

Lelouch raised his hand above his face again and saw it without any problem. He couldn't make out colors very well, but he could see his hand in a dim light, like there was moonlight in the box he was in. He glanced at the white fabric that surrounded him and he felt stupid enough to smack himself. The white fabric was somehow luminescent of course. Would also explain why he couldn't find a definite light source.

_Out._

But that was not important; he had to find a way to get out of this case he had been put into… This case lined with expensive white fabric… The pieces set together in Lelouch's mind and he thought he heard them make a "Clock!" sound, the sound of the lid of a coffin closing, when the realization hit him; he was in a coffin. It would explain the fact that he still didn't feel himself breathing and didn't seem to have a need to do so. It would also explain that feeling he had that he was dislocated from his own body. The question was how could he wake up in his own coffin? C.C was seemingly immortal; did she do something to him, so that he would be as well? Only if he could remember how he ended up here…

_Out! Now!_

Lelouch felt the sudden urge to get out, out of this suffocating small space that trapped him. He would probably be screwed if he was already buried, but if he wasn't, then he might be able to force the coffin open. That was the problem: Why would he have to force a coffin open if it wasn't buried? Why would there be a lock in his coffin, or why would someone put a rock on the lid. He was doomed to die slowly out of starvation if he was already buried, he just didn't have the power to –

_Power._

Lelouch slammed his hands on the cover of the coffin and pushed with all his power. Who cared if there was six feet of dirt on him? He would simply dig –_claw_- his way out if he had to. He strained his muscles and felt a strange sensation that he was not alone in the coffin, like there was someone else inside, just as trapped as he was and it wanted out with a hysteric enthusiasm. Now that he had noticed it he had to correct himself in his overly analytic mind: He didn't feel like there was _someone_ there _with _him; He felt like there was _something _else _inside _him.

He would have rather not noticed that.

Now that he was aware of whatever was with him, it was also aware of him. Lelouch didn't know if the image was because of the dull white all around him, or his quickly panicking mind, but he suddenly knew that the something that he just noticed was looking at him. He could almost see it slowly turning away from its own fear and confusion and focusing on him. It was watching him with eyes that it did not have, but still watching him intently and unrelentingly.

_Out! Out! Out!_

Lelouch felt like he had to get out of this coffin, or he would lose his mind. He could become claustrophobic in this situation, sure, but it was the thing inside him that demanded for him to find a way out like a spoiled child yelled for ice cream or for a balloon. No matter how large its and his desire to get out grew, there was no way for him to get out of a coffin that had already buried. He had no way of communicating with the outside world and he couldn't presume that someone would come and dig him up.

_OUT!_

Lelouch lost all control and feeling of his body and his whole consciousness was darkness where he had no body. This was how it had been when he first came to acknowledge himself. He couldn't call it "waking up" anymore when he knew what had happened. The thing inside him had thrown him away and took control again. Lelouch had never liked to be left in the dark, he had always insisted on knowing and learning things that people around him knew. He had gotten into chess after he'd seen Schneizel playing against the emperor, their father. He had never liked being left in the dark and now it was practically happening; he was practically left in the dark and he started to try and see what that thing was doing by trying to see it again with his mind.

At first he didn't see anything at all and the only thing he was aware of was his growing impatience. He didn't except any supernatural thing to be as easy to use as Geass. But it did seem like him and whatever the thing was that had possessed him were sharing a body, so he _should _have some kind of link to it. It was his body after all and the thing was the intruder, at least that's what he presumed. As far as he could tell the power called Geass was simply either activating the untapped potential of the human psyche, or implanting power into the unused part of the human brain. C.C had never agreed to tell him in detail and he had not pressured her about it, it was not like he had any use for that information anyways.

Lelouch went over his thoughts when something started bugging him about what he had just remembered. The Geass was tapping into the unused part of the human brain… so could he break through to the surface by using his Geass if the nameless thing was actually possessing his body? Would the power of Geass somehow replace the thing that had possessed him? Well, it was worth a shot…

Lelouch concentrated and tried to remember the feeling of using his Geass. The nudge he felt in his head when the power shot out of him and the taste of ozone he got in his mouth towards the end. Lelouch concentrated on feeling that surge of power and indeed saw something after a while; a blurred image in the very center of his vision. The only thing he could make out was that whatever the image was portraying was moving. If it was a memory he forced out with this concentration or the world outside this darkness that he saw through his Geass. He held on to the feeling of his Geass and the image gradually came to focus.

He saw a bobbling image of a doorway arching high above his head sculpted directly into the rock that surrounded his vision. The doorway grew larger until it was out of frame and he saw what was beyond the doorway after a blinding light momentarily blinded him. He saw a garden bathed in strange silvery light that made the brightest of the flowers planted along a long and wide road that stretched out in front of him straight as a ruler and paved in old, but well kept, pebble stones shine. He image tilted to left and right and Lelouch saw that the roses and other flowers nearest to the doorway were almost blindingly white in the silvery light and that they darkened as the road stretched out, changing color to light blue to light pink and then to a light shade of blue and from there to a deeper color and so on.

He couldn't be sure, but he thought that he felt a foreign sense of awe and joy. The garden was well kept and beautiful, sure, but Lelouch had been a Britannian prince, so it was nothing to be amazed about, so the feeling must be the foreign invader's using his body right now. The feeling was nothing but a shadow of an emotion, like faded memory, but it was definitely there. The image he was watching intently rapidly bobbled towards the flowers to his right: the thing using his body was running to the flowers for some reason. The view was suddenly filled with the flowers and Lelouch felt another surge of ghost-like joy. Was it really sniffing the roses? Why would it do that?

Lelouch watched as the invader using his body smelled every rose in turn and then took one and brought it close to his face and it disappeared somewhere below his sight. The rose came back into view and only half of the pedals were still on it. Was it eating the flowers now? What was this thing, a vegan? This presumption was proved wrong as Lelouch saw that the thing spat out most of the pedals a couple of seconds later. It picked up another rose from the bush and watched it for a long time. Lelouch couldn't know what was going on within this thing's mind, but now he was rather sure that it was not very smart.

He started feeling his body again as the feeling of using his Geass became constant and felt more natural. He wasn't sure how long he could keep it up, but he didn't seem to come any closer to getting his body back under his own control. He just felt as the foreign thing moved his body rather awkwardly. His movements were fidgety and he was many times in the danger of falling down as he stumbled on the pebbles. Lelouch became more and more sure that the foreign feeling of joy belonged to the thing using his body as it ran around and smelled and picked the flowers, still picking up a few and tasting them.

It seemed to realize that flowers were not something to eat and when it noticed that there was the same kind of flower on each side of the road it started walking on one side and simply smelled and picked them occasionally. When it reached the end of the road and the large iron gate and brick wall it picked up a black rose from the flower bed and smelled it as it stared at the gate. It was made out of black iron and the wall next to it seemed to be made out of blocks of white marble. There seemed to be no other way out than to climb it, but there was a subtle humming sound coming off it, so it was probably electrically charged. Lelouch's arm stretched out towards it, but stopped right before touching the steel, seemed like the thing inhabiting his body could sense the danger somehow. Lelouch's world was plunged back into darkness as his eyes closed.

_Home?_

How was he going to get out of here? He had to go home. He didn't know where this place was and how he got here, but it did look like it was not within a distance he could walk to Ashford Academy. The walls seemed too slippery to climb and he would not be able to climb the gate because it was electrified. Should he wait for someone to walk by and order them to let him out with his Geass? That was a possible outcome and right now he couldn't see another way out. He should circle the wall and see if there were any trees which he could climb and thus jump out.

Though he could only hear the outside world like it was behind some kind of wall he still noticed how the silence of the place he was in changed. From the silence of a garden full of dormant, yet vibrant life, to the silence of a city that is quiet, but not quite asleep. The first wishful thought he had was that he had woken up from a bizarre dream and he would see the ceiling above his bed in Ashford academy. What had happened to him so far were far too unbelievable to be reality. No one could wake up in a coffin… Well, C.C could, but she was a little special. An immortal witch from what she claimed, Lelouch was leaning on believing her claim from what he had seen.

Lelouch's eyes were opened and he saw the dimly lit interior of a very familiar room inside the Ashford academy. He was standing in the room were the student council gathered. He turned his head upwards and saw that the lights were out, but it still seemed like the room was dimly lit for him, could it simply be that the light coming from the windows? Well, his eyes should be used to the dark by now; he had woken up in a coffin after all. Lelouch was almost to the door when he noticed that he could actually control his own body. Maybe he had just been dream-walking and ended up in the club room. Yes, that must be it. He was a little surprised about his amount of motor-control while sleepwalking, but decided to shrug it off. He stepped to the door, opened it and walked towards the exit.

**Rivalz**

Rivalz had been desperately trying to find his history notebook and after rummaging through his room he had concluded that he must have left it in the student council room. Lelouch's ascension to the throne had really distracted him from his studies, so now he had to get a passing grade from the test tomorrow or he would have to repeat it during summer. Lelouch's death and the funeral that followed after that didn't help either and it had taken him days to gather his wits and study seriously.

Sometimes he thought he was a little too emotional for his own good.

Rivalz rounded the corner and saw a figure wearing white walking along the wall of the school building. He froze completely and could only stare as the figure that had its back turned to him. He felt how blood escaped from his face and could hear his heart beating in his ears. He had forgotten how to breathe and regained this ability only after the figure rounded the corner of the building and disappeared from his sight. His knees nearly gave out under him and he had to lean on the wall next to him not to fall on the ground. It couldn't be, could it? These kinds of things don't happen in real life. Someone must be playing a rather cruel prank on him.

"Le… Lelouch?" He had not seen his face, but he was almost sure it had been Lelouch. But Lelouch was dead and buried, both his death and the funeral had been broadcasted live across the world. He should run after the guy that was playing such a despicable prank and beat some tact into them. If he was sure it was a prank, then why were his knees so weak? He didn't even see his face, so what could it be? And now that he thought about it the pranksters weren't even that smart. "Lelouch" was dressed in the clothes he was buried in, but he saw a spot of blood on his back. Lelouch had been redressed for his funeral and it's commonly known that dead people do not bleed.

"Those bastards… They are so getting expelled for this." Rivalz mumbled and jogged to the corner the prankster had turned on. If the pranksters knew what was good for them, they were long gone by now, but he couldn't leave this be if they thought he would just run after seeing what they wanted him to believe to be a ghost. He turned at the corner and to his surprise saw the figure wearing white still walking further on. Rivalz ran after him without giving it much thought until he was about 10 meters away from the figure. Did the pranksters use make up? The figure's skin was as white as the fabric and the spot of blood looked rather real as it had turned almost black around the edges. His eyes strayed to the figure's hand and what he saw was that it was just as pale as his face and the fingers looked dirty and the fingernails were scraped and bluish. This was just a prankster, right? Someone from the theater club messing around with make up and costumes for fun, right?

Then why was he so hesitant on calling him out and seeing his face? He couldn't seriously think it could be Lelouch? No, things like that only happened in ghost stories and novels. It couldn't be Lelouch, just couldn't. Lelouch had been buried in the imperial mausoleum in the mainland, so this just couldn't be Lelouch. And if it were a ghost or something, wouldn't it have better places to haunt than Ashford academy? Lelouch couldn't have any lingering regrets left here, right? Even though he did spend years living here before ascending to the throne, his home was gone now.

The figure stopped and Rivalz was snapped out of his thoughts. He had actually followed him for minutes deep in thought without realizing. They were now standing on the fenced edge of the great big hole in the earth that FLEIA had left behind. The man wearing white reached out a hand towards the fence and when it slowly clenched on the chain link fence an image of a big albino spider caused him to shiver. This guy deserved a trophy for his acting out the role of a creepy ghoul from beyond the grave, but this had gone too far.

"Hey, what exactly do you think you're doing being out this late at night?" Rivalz asked while trying to get some authority in his voice, but it took all his effort to get the squeak, which was trying to push through into his voice, from hearing. He was more afraid he'll ever admit; the situation was just too surreal. At first there was no reaction from the man standing in front of him and in hindsight Rivalz hoped that there wouldn't have been. He didn't turn around and shout something like "Boo!", he didn't relax and laugh at him for falling for his act. No, he didn't do anything that a midnight prankster would do at the end of a joke. What he did was something much more melodramatic, but nothing could have horrified Rivalz more. He spoke, spoke two short sentences and it horrified him.

"My home… Where is my home, Rivalz?" Lelouch slowly said in a painfully dry and raspy voice. It sounded like there was sand paper grinding his throat and anyone would be coughing constantly with a throat like that. Rivalz took a step back as he felt how a chilling cold hand of fear clamped down on his heart and made it pound even faster. Any way he looked at it now, this was a ghoul in the form of his deceased friend. He didn't know if it had any ill intentions or if it was Lelouch, or even if he was aware of his death, but Rivalz did what humans instinctively do when confronted with something unnatural and impossible to explain; He ran, he turned on his heels and ran as fast as he could.

As he was running with his heart pounding against his chest and his mind clouded by the fear rampaging in him all he could think of was the possibility that Lelouch was running behind him. Reaching those deathly pale hands towards him to grab him to drag him down to the ground and kill him, maybe even eat him alive. Of course the fact that Lelouch had been able to make a perfectly understandable sentence and had shown no signs of aggression occurred to him only after he had ran about 200 meters from him. He spun around and was ready to run if Lelouch was indeed after him. He was almost sure he could outrun Lelouch, but Lelouch was supposed to be dead, so him even being able to walk was miraculous, so he couldn't be sure.

Lelouch was nowhere to be seen. He had ran only about 30 seconds and hadn't reached the closest corner of a building, so he should have seen Lelouch running if he had started running shortly after he did. So, what did this mean?

Rivalz' knees gave out and he fell to the ground. The amount of adrenaline in his system made his limbs shake and his heart to pound against his head. He tried to analytically piece together what had just happened to him and after a minute or so he had three possible options as to what could have happened.

One: This really had been a prank on him and the prankster ran to hide as soon as Rivalz turned his back. That was quite possible and the most normal explanation he could think of, but what possible reason would anyone have to do something like this?

Two: It really had been Lelouch and he had climbed the fence and jumped down to the mound where his home had once been because of some kind of amnesia he had suffered because of his… death. Rivalz thought this to be highly unlikely, since Lelouch's body had not been buried in Japan, but in the imperial tomb in the mainland and for him to have the means to travel back to Area 11 after everyone thinks he's dead was unlikely.

Three: What Rivalz had seen had no physical body and was only the remnant left behind on this earth by Lelouch's many and deep regrets; in other words: A ghost. Lelouch choosing this place to haunt was possible, since he'd lived here for as long as Rivalz had known him. This possibility caused Rivalz to raise his head up to the darkened sky and fight back the tears. He didn't know about Lelouch's final plan, but he had believed in the Lelouch he knew until the end and the thought of Lelouch not being able to find peace even in death brought him to the verge of tears.

Sometimes Rivalz thought he was too emotional for his own good.

**Lelouch**

_Home, your home._

Home… yes, home was not simply a place. Home was where his heart rested and where he returned to. Home was and had always been Nunnally. Home was Nunnally, wherever they had been at any point in time they had called home. So, home was the place where Nunnally was.

_Nunnally…_

Lelouch felt the chain link fence disappearing from between his fingers as the world went out of focus and he felt like he was walking through a waterfall. He felt the weight of the falling water pressing down on him for the split second it was there. The blurriness in his vision disappeared as he blinked his eyes a couple of times. He had to wonder what just happened, because now he was standing in a room that looked like a royal bedroom. The windows were covered with big and heavy looking curtain that let a slither of light through, just enough for Lelouch to see in the darkness. He also became aware of a steady sound of breathing coming from the colossal bed. Lelouch had lived with Nunnally and taken care of her from the moment he was paralyzed and blinded when their mother was assassinated, so he had become able to tell the nature of her dreams from the way she breathed. And he was definitely able to tell that the one sleeping in that bed was Nunnally, and that she was having a bad dream.

Lelouch hesitated on approaching the bed for a second. The room was too luxurious and befitted for her needs for it to be a temporary solution, so was he really suffering from amnesia and had their royal status been revealed? If that was the case, then how much time was he missing? Lelouch hesitated and swayed on his feet until Nunnally moved in her sleep and called out his name in the saddest voice he had ever heard her mutter. Lelouch stepped to her side and almost by instinct grabbed her hand. Now that he looked at her up close it looked like she had been crying hard before falling asleep. What had happened to upset her this much? More importantly; what happened to him? He had no recollection of how he ended up in that box. What he did remember was all messed up and there was no particular point where it was cut off.

"Nii-san…" Nunnally muttered in her sleep with heartbreak lacing her voice. Lelouch was about to say something to comfort her when his mind caught up with the situation. Nunnally was heartbroken, sleeping in a lavish bedroom fit for royalty, he had woken up in a coffin and somehow managed to travel thousands of miles in an instant on two occasions. All suggested that he had died and was now a ghost, but that just didn't make sense. Whatever the case, it made him start to wonder if he should be here or not. He raised his hand from Nunnally's and stood up slowly. He should find out more about the situation he was in before making contact with Nunnally. Lelouch walked to the door that was to the right of the bed and silently slipped through. Now, how had he been able to get here in the first place? He had to lay low until he knew what was going on.

"Le… Lelouch?" A distorted voice made Lelouch almost jump out of his skin from the surprise. His heart would have been racing like crazy, if it beat at all. The voice he heard was very familiar to him; it was his voice after all. Well, his alter ego actually, but he had come to think of Zero as much of a real him than Lelouch Lamperouge, or Lelouch vi Britannia. He turned to the voice with his eyes widened and saw Zero standing ten feet away from him, seemingly frozen in place from surprise. They stared at each other for a passing moment before Zero was seemingly shaken out of his or her's shock and shot forward. Lelouch was unable to react in any way before the fist of the person wearing Zero's costume connected with his chin. His head didn't become clouded and it didn't hurt as much as it should have judging from the way he was thrown back by the punch. Lelouch only felt the impact of the fist and then a lot of things happened at once.

First Lelouch felt a crushing pressure pressing against his skin, before Zero's follow up jab to his gut made it disappear. The Zero attacking him was clearly an accomplished martial artist, possibly a special ops agent. Lelouch felt his consciousness being yanked back forcefully and then saw his right hand slashing out towards Zero's mask. The hand was not curled into a fist and it would have only served to distract Zero, but he or she still took a sudden step back as the hand was about to make contact. Whoever this was, they were incredibly fast. Lelouch started feeling the immense pressure pressing on his skin again and his view of the world was rapidly blurring, but the last thing he could make out was four horizontal cuts appearing on Zero's mask and causing the vizier, that Lelouch had prepared for him to be able to use his Geass, fall off and reveal a hazelnut brown eye that was lined with a slight red glow.

"Suzaku?" Lelouch either only thought to himself or said out loud. He had no way of knowing with the thing inside him numbing his senses. The world was blurred out and this time it didn't come back into focus immediately, there was a three second period where Lelouch felt how his flesh was torn asunder by what felt like shards of ice jutting into his flesh, over and over again. His overly analytic mind determined it couldn't have been more than three seconds, but it felt like an eternity. After the blurred darkness filled with sharp icy pain dissipated, the world assaulted his senses again. Somehow, the surrounding darkened room was too much for his senses to take and he felt his consciousness escaping him. He was unconscious before he even hit the soft carpet.

**Karen**

Karen was disturbed out of her dream by something and because of the paranoia that still stayed in her mind even after her part in the war, and any war for that matter, was over she held in her breath and listened closely for the sound of the possible assassin's breathing or footsteps. He stayed perfectly still for a minute and when she didn't hear anything but her step mother pacing back and forth in a neighboring room, she just turned into a more comfortable position and snuggled herself deeper into the warm and fluffy covers of her bed.

"I am so moving out…" She muttered as she bordered on sleep and consciousness, completely unaware of the figure collapsed on the floor only two meters away from her sleeping form.


	2. I am You, You are Me

**Hi there! Crazy Laughter here, presenting you with the second chapter of my story, What Resides Within.** **As the name might suggest to the brighter ones off you; Lelouch is not a ghost.**

**Okay, now that that is settled. I present a public thank you to the ones that reviewed the first chapter and urge the ones that didn't to at least review this one.**

**That is all. Enjoy!  
**

* * *

**Second Chapter**

**I am You, You are Me.**

"What… is going on here?" Suzaku said as his hands clenched on pieces of bloodied cloth. What he had been fighting just now suddenly disappeared and left what it had been wearing behind. What exactly was it? It resembled Lelouch, but its face was too pale and… wrong for it to be him. An android made to look like him, or perhaps an assassin from a royal family?

Nunnally! It stepped out of Nunnally's room with blood on its chest and he stayed to wonder its disappearance! How utterly stupid, it could very well have a Geass that made its body evaporate, or something for all he knew, but that was not important now. He had to check on Nunnally. Suzaku turned to the door the thing had stepped through and opened it hastily. He stepped in without hesitaition and ran to Nunnally's bed. He kneeled down next to her and took his helmet off. There were no surveillance cameras inside Nunnally's bedroom. He held his breath in and listened closely for Nunnally's breathing. After his heart calmed down he could hear her breathing calmly in her sleep. She must have exhausted herself by crying for her not to wake up from the noise he made entering the room.

He let out the breath he was holding in from relief and then started to systematically search the room for bugs, surveillance cameras or other foreign devices. What reason could that thing have to be here of all places? It couldn't really have been Lelouch, could it? No, that was impossible, there was no way Lelouch had the Code, according to C.C that is. He would have resurrected shortly after his rather public execution, not three days afterwards. But still, if those rags in the hallway are gone, then this goes to a whole other plane of "weird".

Suzaku went around the room and scanned through the places where bombs or gas cartridges could be hidden with an electronics detector he carried just for these kinds of situations, there were a lot of pockets in Zero's cloak. He'd have a team sweep this room of bugs in the morning, but now he just had to make sure Nunnally was not in immediate danger. He did not want to wake her. He ended his search by scanning Nunnaly's bed as quietly as possible. That was when he noticed some stains on the covers around Nunnally's right hand. Her hand was over the covers on her side and there was also something on her hand. Suzaku leaned closer swept some of it on his clove. He took out a small flashlight and watched the stains closely. It looked like dry soil, dark in color. There was none on the floor of the room, so how did it get specifically on Nunnally's hand?

Suzaku turned off the flashlight and walked around the bed to the door. He clicked the flashlight back on and checked the door handle. Yes, there was dark and dry soil staining the metal and the wood around it. Did that thing have soil on its hands? Why would there be soil only on its hands if it came through the garden? This was getting more and more weird.

Could it really have been Lelouch's ghost? Did his face look wrong because he had no physical body? Suzaku stepped back out into the hall and saw the pile of clothes left behind by the unknown assailant. They were the same pristine white color as the ones Lelouch was buried in. They were stained by blood in the place where Suzaku had stabbed him, but the clothes he died in were kept somewhere else, he was buried in a different outfit.

No, it wasn't a ghost; that was for sure, Ghosts don't bleed.

**Karen**

Karen woke up feeling warm, comfortable and slightly sleepy. She just laid there for minutes before moving at all. She had slept only to sustain herself for so many years; now that the battles had been fought she could indulge herself a little and wake up slowly. She turned to her back and her head rolled into a spot of blindingly bright sunlight. She dove under the covers and stretched her limbs slowly while blinking away the bright neon green shadows from her vision. Her body felt so very relaxed and warm that she didn't want to get up at all, but she didn't want to oversleep. Just because she could didn't mean she should. It was a Saturday and she didn't have anything specific planned, but she should start searching for an apartment. She had enough money from her time in the Black knights, so that she could live with her _real_ mother until she finished school. If those wouldn't be enough, then she'd get a job if her mother wasn't well enough to do that by that time. She was able to fight in a resistance while going to school, so maintaining a job should be easy.

Karen sighed and threw the covers off of her and then narrowed her eyes from the sudden brightness. The bed was probably one of the few things she will miss about this place; it was so warm, soft and big. She didn't sleep better on any other bed, but it was not like sleep was that much of a crucial part of her life. Karen swung her legs to the side of the bed and let out a massive yawn before getting to her feet. She stared out the window drowsily and saw a small bird chirping energetically on a branch of the many trees in the Stadtfield manor's garden. Seeing the small bird did bring a smile on her lips, but she couldn't help but feel like the bird was mocking her from waking up so late.

Karen turned her eyes from the bird and started walking to the bathroom adjacent to her room. Apart from the bird mocking her it was a really good morning. The sun was shining, birds were singing, there was a body on the floor, the war was over… Karen reached her hand towards the door handle of the bathroom when she finally acknowledged what she saw just a moment ago. There was a body lying on the floor at the end of her bed. She had only passed him by mere inches. Not only that there was a body lying on the floor of her bedroom, but he was also butt naked. Thinking about what this man had been doing next to her bed made her stomach turn from disgust. Was this one of her step mother's visitors that strayed in here after taking a little too much alcohol?

"I am so moving out…" Karen muttered as she stomped to her bedside table and picked up the pistol placed on it. It was there in case she woke up with an assassin in the room, but it also worked as a way to discourage a perverted bastard from making advances. She walked over to the man on the floor and then pointed the gun to his head. The safety was still on, so that there wouldn't be any accidents if he woke up with a start.

"Oi! Wake up, pervert!" Karen shouted to wake up the man passed out in her room. Now that she was fully awake and concentrated on the man lying on the floor she noticed how uncommonly pale he was. So, her step mother had a gothic lover, so? But now that she looked even harder she noticed dark spots around the body, blood stains. Was this really just a late night visitor that mistake one door for another? Karen bent down on one knee and while holding the pistol steadily pointed on his head she turned the man over.

What she saw as the man's hair was swept back from his face made her whole body go numb and her hold on the gun in her hand to tighten considerably. She flinched back from fright and then sat on the floor while pointing the gun at the body lying on the floor with both hands. This had to be a trick, some demented try at… at something. She couldn't think of any viable reason for someone to do something like this right now, but she was sure it would make sense at some point.

"Le- Le… Lelouch?" She asked before she could stop herself from doing something so stupid. She was not falling for this, no way! Lelouch was dead, had been for three days now and there was no way he would come back. But… Why would anyone do something like plant a body that looks like Lelouch in her bedroom? What possible reason could there be for something like that?

"Lelouch, can you hear me?" Karen said again without any way of stopping herself. It was like her mind was racing on counting the reasons this was impossible and her actual self believing it more and more. She had to wonder if this was how it was like to be insane; your mind shouting that it is not real, but your body and soul believing it to be.

" Ugh… Kallen…" Lelouch muttered in a mere whisper and Karen could have believed it to be her own imagination if he hadn't turned his head and raised his right hand to his face as well. Lelouch had never been able to pronounce her name right, like almost any other Japanese person she had met. Even though he was a Britannian prince he was too used to speaking Japanese, so Karen had thought Zero to be Japanese all the way to the point of seeing his mask breaking. Well, if not Japanese, the she didn't except him to be Britannian, definitely not a prince.

"Lelouch… How is this…? How did you survive? I saw a sword pierce your heart, I saw your body being carried away, and I was at your funeral for god's sakes!" Karen yelled as she got up and retreated from Lelouch while still pointing the gun at him. She was almost certain that this indeed was Lelouch, but she didn't know why would Lelouch come to her of all people? And why was he naked for that matter? It couldn't be that Lelouch was here for revenge, right? She would actually prefer that to the other reason that occurred to her, taking account him being in her bedroom… naked.

Why had she not seen him take a breath even once, why was he so pale and why did he feel so cold? What was exactly going on here? Was this really Lelouch, the Lelouch she knew, or some… escaped science experiment? How could have Lelouch's body, if this was Lelouch, travel from where he was buried to Japan in only three days after he had been buried? Did someone exhume his grave and resurrect him? Was it C.C who resurrected him? She did seem to be immortal herself… There were too many questions in her mind. This situation was too surreal for anyone to figure out. What should she do? Help Lelouch or… she didn't know!

"Kallen… Help… me…" Lelouch said in a whisper before his body fell completely limp. Karen stood there with the pistol shaking in her hands. Was this really Lelouch? Did he come here because he couldn't be seen alive by the public? His plan on bringing peace to the world did include him dying publicly, and staying dead for that matter. Okay, Karen had to admit that she'd probably never understand the "how" of this matter, but right now she only had to think of the "what to do now".

Karen placed the pistol on her left hand and cautiously approached Lelouch. He didn't look like he was breathing, but he had just talked to her coherently. He could have died just now, but since she wasn't sure what the hell was going on she still should be careful when approaching him. Karen knelt down next to Lelouch and pressed her right index finger on his neck to search for a pulse. She was trained to do this when she was in the Black Knights. She moved her fingers several times and pressed harder, but still couldn't find a pulse and now that she was so close to him she was sure he was not breathing. Lelouch was dead…

Again.

Karen lowered the gun to the floor and just watched Lelouch lying there while thinking about how and why the hell he got here, just to die again. She felt how her mind calmed down and she started noticing things that she couldn't see with her surprise from seeing Lelouch again. Lelouch was deathly pale and his lips were practically blue. His eyes were encircled with black and his skin looked like clay; he was as dead as you could be. Why did he have to ask her to help him? There was nothing she could do. CPR wouldn't work when his body temperature was so low and she had no way of restarting his heart without calling for help. Taking to account that he didn't want to ruin the plan for making a better future for his sister Karen shouldn't let anyone know about this. There was nothing she could do for him…

Again.

Karen's vision blurred as silent tears streamed down her face and down to the floor. It was her blurred vision and erratic thoughts that made her miss the dark lines slowly making their way down Lelouch's neck and to the wound on his chest. If Karen would have seen them she would have thought them to be some kind of tattoo while they stayed still, since they were clear, straight lines arching from under his chin and across his chest. The lines made their way across his chest and then disappeared into the wound without any noise and undetected by Karen. Karen wept quietly for a minute or so until she heard a sudden and loud cracking sound from Lelouch's body. She wiped the tears from her eyes and leaned closer to Lelouch's body and heard the sound again and also saw Lelouch's body slightly nudge. She knew she should grab the gun and distance herself, but a mixture of fear and curiosity kept her in place. Was there something inside Lelouch's body? Was this what he wanted her to help him with?

Karen was scared out of her mind as Lelouch's body suddenly arched up like he was being electrocuted and he inhaled violently. She stumbled back and forgot to grab the gun in her terrified state. Blood gushed out of the wound on Lelouch's chest and Karen saw how his torso became drenched as he continued to breathe rapidly. Lelouch's back was arched and he was supported by his shoulders and his heels while his eyes where wide open and his mouth gaping open as he breathed. Karen couldn't do anything else but watch as Lelouch's hands clenched into tight fists from the extreme pain he must have been experiencing. And then, as fast as it had started, it stopped. Lelouch's body relaxed and he crashed back onto the ground

Karen cautiously approached the blood soaked figure of Lelouch and noticed that now she saw his chest slowly rising and lowering. She edged closer and then checked for a pulse from his wrist. After a moment of finding the right spot she indeed did feel a steady pulse. The wound on his chest was still bleeding slightly, but she practically could see it closing.

He was breathing and his heart was beating; Lelouch was alive.

**Lelouch**

Apart from the mind numbing glimpses of pain and recognition Lelouch remained unaware of his own body. He thought he saw Kallen at one point and called out to her for help, but he wasn't sure if that wasn't just a figment of his imagination. Kallen had been one of his most loyal supporters and was definitely someone he could trust, so maybe his mind made a picture of her just to calm his nerves. He was now floating in that unawareness that his consciousness had awoke in after… something that had ended in him being in a coffin. He still hadn't recovered his lost memories and it bugged the hell out of him. He felt like he had all the information, but with no way of reaching it. He would just have to wait for an external trigger, or for them to come back on their own.

Lelouch felt so very tired, his whole body was aching and there was a dull pain pressing down on his chest. At least that meant that he was now aware of his own body and wasn't cast away from his own body like before. He became aware of his body bit by bit and also that he was floating. He distinctly felt nothing on his feet or supporting his body in any way, so he had to be floating in midair or in some kind of liquid. He opened his eyes and saw only darkness; it was not actually the absolute darkness he had woken up before: he could see edges to the darkness. It was like he was in the center of a completely round room. The walls he saw were consisted out of a swirling stream of dark liquid of undetermined color; all he could make out was that it was a different in color than the rest of the darkness.

He turned his eyes to the ground and saw his own body, naked. He had no clothes on, but he did not feel hot or cold. And there was a gaping hole on his chest, a perfectly circular hole with some kind of liquid swirling in it, like the walls. He strained his neck and was able to make out that the liquid was swirling in a spiral into his chest. There was no more said liquid flowing into the hole, so the amount in his chest must have just kept on moving on its own power. So, the source of the dull pain on his chest was obvious. What exactly was going on? Where was he?

"_You are Me." _Lelouch heard an eerie voice whispering out of the darkness surrounding him. When he tried to remember what it sounded like, all he could remember was a feeling of cold and… a lisp, a very slight lisp, but definitely there. He could not determine if the voice was male or female or where it was coming from. He turned around and tried to catch a glimpse of someone hiding in the darkness surrounding him. If they were hiding in the mystery liquid (that was flowing upwards now by the way defying all laws of physics) he would not be able to find them.

"Who are you?" Lelouch asked and noticed that he could hear his own voice only very faintly, like he was listening to a conversation through a door. He raised his hand to his face and noticed that he could just and just see through it in the darkness, he was transparent. So, was this a dream? No, it was too stoic for a dream; there were too many constant variables.

"_I am… You are Me… I am… Me?" _The mysterious voice sounded puzzled and Lelouch noticed that the movement of the liquid surrounding him as a wall turned more chaotic. It couldn't be that the whole of the mysterious liquid was what he was talking with? Whatever the case may be, the timing was too perfect for it to be a coincidence.

"_Who are you?" _The mysterious voice asked and Lelouch still could not place the origin of the voice with a slight lisp.

"I am Lelouch vi Britannia, the 99th emperor of the empire of Britannia. I am Zero, the hero who freed the world. I am Lelouch Lamperouge, a loving and caring brother." Lelouch answered without being able to stop himself. Why did he say he was the 99th emperor of Britannia? That was a blatant… lie, right? Wait…

Pictures and voices started to flood into his mind as all the memories he had lost found their place again. He had continued to be Zero, killed his parents, betrayed Suzaku and the Black Knights, came back, challenged the whole Britannian empire, Almost lost Nunnally, made her go through so much pain, turned the whole world against him as the 99th emperor of Britannia… The memories that flooded his mind where far from being in chronological order or even coherent, but he did know how it ended; He died, so why was he alive?

"_You are Me." _ The voice said like it was replying to his silent question. Again Lelouch searched for a source of the voice, but couldn't find it. That statement it seemed so adamant on did not make any sense and did not answer his question at all.

"That does not make sense. I am _me_, you are _you_." Lelouch said and walked to the wall of streaming liquid that surrounded him. He tried to push his hand into the stream, but just before his hand was to go in the stream stopped on the point of contact and his hand met a solid wall. He was trapped, not that he expected for there to be a way out of a hallucination, or whatever this was.

"Where are you?" Lelouch asked the question that had been bothering him all this time. He paid more attention to the streaming liquid and saw that the speed and direction of the stream changed slightly and twisted a couple of times as the voice was thinking about his question, So, where the voice's thoughts controlling this wall? He did know that Geass gave people some extraordinary powers and this space didn't seem like reality. He could as well be trapped in his own mind as someone used their Geass to question him. His inability to stop himself from exposing all of his aliases just a moment ago supported this theory.

"_I am here." _The voice said and Lelouch thought he could finally determine where the voice was coming from. The fact that he could do it the moment the voice announced its location suggested again that he was inside some hallucination. The voice seemed to be coming from the wall opposite to him, or from the center of the room. He glanced around and saw that in the very center of the room a sphere of something that looked like black liquid separated from the darkness that served as the floor. It was looked like a drop of oil dropped into water. Lelouch had noticed that his movements were somewhat sluggish, but he hadn't though he was in water. It would actually explain the other liquid flowing upwards, but it was not like anything here had to go by normal laws of physics; this was not real after all.

"_I am Space. I am You." _The eerie voice said in a more distinct voice. He still could not determine the sex of the speaker, but he had a feeling that the voice was speaking like a child. The voice sounded like it couldn't pronounce words quite right and the voice was also small and weak, but the voice could still belong to right about anyone, or anything.

Lelouch took a few cautious steps towards the sphere of liquid hanging in mid-air and then stop as he saw its smooth surface ripple and a vertical cut appeared on it. There was a clear line of light going along the center of the orb. He stood still and watched the slit slowly widen into a perfect oval shape. What he saw inside was only a slither of aqua colored light that shone like the sun in the surrounding darkness. The light twisted and danced in the very center of the oval opening in the orb and then started swirling and expanding into a sphere. Lelouch watched as the light swirled in a spiral and expanded to the edges of the oval opening in the orb. It stopped growing and the swirling motion of the light slowed into an almost indistinguishable movement. Lelouch took another step towards the orb and wondered if this was really what had been talking in the eerie voice. He took a step to the side and the oval opening in the orb followed him.

"Who are you?" Lelouch asked from the orb hanging in the air. The streaming liquid surrounding him started to waver and the spiraling light in the oval opening started to move rapidly again. Was it thinking? Lelouch had to admit that there was a definite connection with the eerie voice and the movement of the liquid surrounding him.

"_I am…" _Lelouch watched as the oval opening closed again and then opened again with the spiraling light directed directly towards him. He felt the dull pain in his chest stir and his intestines crawl. He literally felt how his organs shifted slightly out of place and then back again one by one, it felt absolutely sickening. He grabbed his stomach and tried to keep his insides in place, but with little success. He looked back up to the orb and noticed that it had moved from the center of the room to loom over him. The shining aqua light in the orb was still directed towards him. Only two thirds of the light was visible as the edge of the oval opening covered part of the light. The oval opening closed and opened again sluggishly and now when it opened again Lelouch noticed another little detail. There was a circle of complete darkness in the very center of the spiraling light, it was so small and the light had been so blinding in the darkness that Lelouch had not noticed it until now.

It was an eye, a huge eye in an orb made out of darkness, but still an eye. Lelouch actually felt how something was watching him through it; something that was closely tied to the dull pain in his chest and the sickening feeling of his intestines moving about.

"_I am…" _The eye blinked sluggishly again and then concentrated solely on Lelouch's eyes, its gaze burrowing down to his very soul. _"Zapan."_

…

Lelouch woke with a start and saw an alcove lined with fabric arching above him. Drastically different from the oppressing darkness in his "dream", if it could be called that. After coming aware of his surroundings the next thing he came to realize was that everything hurt, _everything_. It hurt to breath, it hurt to move and the light hurt his eyes. Even being still felt like there were thousands of needles pricking him all over his body. It was not actually painful, but it was absolutely maddening. Well, at least this meant his blood was flowing. But still, where was he? Was it safe for him to just relax? It didn't seem like he was tied down or anything and the bed he was lying in was rather soft and warm. He couldn't imagine someone who was out to hurt or question him putting him in such a lavish bed, so could he presume he was safe.

Lelouch attempted to get up on his forearms and both of his arms cramped as he tried. He dropped back down on the pillow and gritted his teeth from the pain. No, he couldn't call this a simple cramp; the pain was too intense for that. It probably was a ruptured blood vessel in the muscles in his arms. Oh god, it hurt like hell and there was nothing he could do about it. Lelouch gritted his teeth and tried not to move at all to avoid causing any other damage to his body. He couldn't determine how long he stayed like that, but eventually he felt his arms numbing completely and then saw them twitching about a minute after the numbness had started. He stayed and watched as his hands twitched and then rested, and then twitched again, until he regained feeling in both of his arms and the pain was completely gone. Well, at least the pain caused by the ruptured blood vessels in his arms.

"Lelouch… Lelouch, are you awake?" Lelouch heard a familiar female voice ask with a frightened undertone in her voice. Lelouch had become very talented in reading people's reactions and voices because of his time as both Zero and the emperor. But still, the question was: What could make Kallen intimidated? She was the bravest person he had ever met, well Suzaku might have been an exception.

Lelouch tried to reply, but the sudden explosion of pain in his throat made him unsure if he was even able to make a sound before he was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness from the pain. How could someone's throat hurt so freaking? Holy mother of god, it was like he had drunk acid and let it simmer in his throat over night! He raised his hand over his throat before being able to think that it might just add to the pain he was experiencing, but luckily his arm seemed to be able to handle that much strain before cramping, or whatever it had been.

"Lelouch, are you alright? Do you need anything? I brought some food and water." Kallen's voice said from his left side. He turned his sight to her voice and saw Kallen looking at him with worried eyes. How did he get here? Where was here? He couldn't be in Kallen's home, could he? He had witnessed himself traveling hundreds, or even thousands of kilometers in an instant, but that was when he thought he might have been a ghost. There no sensible explanation for how he'd traveled those distances so fast if he was in a corporal body.

_Water._

Lelouch became aware that behind the untold pain in his throat was an extreme thirst for water. He noticed the bottle of water on the tray Kallen was still holding while watching him with a worried and a puzzled expression. He couldn't say a word because of the untold pain he was in, but he pointed to the bottle of water and saw Karen following his finger and then setting down the tray on the bedside table and opening the water bottle. She offered it into his hands, but Lelouch noticed that he didn't have the strength in his arms to hold the bottle. Kallen looked a little lost with the water bottle for a second, but then a determined look came over her face. Lelouch felt like smiling when seeing her like that, there was just something amusing about her expression.

"You must be thirsty, Lelouch. Here, drink." Kallen said and offered the bottle to his lips. It was very embarrassing to be so weak for someone as proud as him, but it would be inexcusably rude to deny help. He allowed Kallen to help him pour water past his lips and then swallowed it with gratitude. He nodded a thank you to Kallen and felt how the sip of water did wonders to make the pain in his throat fade. Some water can do miracles to a dry throat. He was still very thirsty, though.

"Thank you, Kallen…" Lelouch said with a very dry throat, but at least he could talk now. Kallen offered the water bottle again and this time Lelouch took hold of the bottle and swallowed two mouthfuls on one go. He knew it probably wasn't wise to drink so much water in one try if he was dehydrated. His stomach would normally cramp up and he'd throw the water up, but now he felt the water rejuvenating him. He hadn't known simple water could taste so good. Lelouch noticed that he had drunk the whole bottle without realizing it. He was still thirsty, but the need was not so maddening now. He turned his attention back to Kallen and noticed that she was sitting on a chair next to the bed, looking at him with a strange expression on her face.

"What is it, Kallen?" Lelouch asked. The pain in his throat was almost completely gone and he could speak freely now if he ignored the occasional twinge of pain. Was the pain in his throat simply because of extreme thirst? Could that even be possible? Kallen looked him in the eye with a tentative demeanor. She opened her mouth, but then slightly drew her body back and turned her eyes to the side. It was clear she had something on her mind, but was hesitating if she should voice it out loud. Lelouch was not sure if it was wise to pressure her on whatever it was.

"Uhm… Are you hungry?" Kallen asked and hurried to the plate on the bedside table. Lelouch thought he saw a blush on her face. He pulled his other hand over the covers and felt the fabric brushing against his skin… his bare skin…

He was naked, oh so very naked, as naked as someone could be. He had no clothes on and because he had no recollection of getting into the bed that meant that Kallen must have put him there. Now that he thought about it, this would also explain Kallen's strange behavior. Sure, he'd seen her naked at least once, so this might be karma, but how had he ended up here, naked? The last thing he could remember (of the real world) was feeling like he was torn apart by glaciers, so were his clothes torn apart as well?

"Kallen…" Lelouch said with a questioning tone. "Why am I naked?"

"I didn't do anything, I swear! I mean… if that's what you were thinking…" Kallen blushed furiously and scanned the roof, obviously trying to avoid meeting his eyes. Lelouch kept on watching her face for signs of lying, but then he realized that he might not have liked to know the truth, so he stopped and waited for Kallen to continue. It felt like she was still going to say something as soon as she got over her embarrassment.

"I… Found you like that. Naked, that is…" Kallen said tentatively and still didn't meet his eyes. Lelouch could tell that she was bothered by something she chose to leave out. Was it the fact that he had appeared here with no vital signs whatsoever, or was there something else? Kallen was definitely leaving something out, of that Lelouch was sure.

"I know I was clinically dead last night… I don't know how I was resurrected either. Believe it or not, I did plan on dying that day… How long ago that was again?" Lelouch said looking straight into Kallen's eyes. Kallen stared right back, trying to see if he was lying or not. Lelouch suspected if she could see if he were lying or not, but he couldn't be sure. She was a very intelligent woman; it was just that her talents were better spent on piloting Knightmares.

"Three… Three days and four nights…" Kallen's posture slouched and tears flowed down her cheeks. "You were gone for three days and four nights, Lelouch…" Kallen said while clenching her eyes shut. She leaned forward and grabbed Lelouch hand with both of her hands. Lelouch felt like he had to do something, but was also pretty sure that whatever he did would make her cry harder. He had known that Kallen had held him in high regard, but had done his best to distance himself from her. Of course that wouldn't matter if he were resurrected after she had attended his funeral and sought her out after that (for whatever reason).

"I… I'm so sorry, Lelouch… I was so weak! I couldn't save you!" Kallen slid off the chair while still clenching his hand. She rested her forehead against the bed he was lying in and sobbed without restraint. He felt like he should do something, but he wasn't sure what that something was. If he did the wrong thing, he'd probably make the situation worse.

"No… No, there was no way you could have saved me. The world would be engulfed in conflict if you had done that. My dramatic and public death was the key part of the plan to give Nunnally a better world to live in. Zero had to keep on being the symbol of freedom and Suzaku had to protect Nunnally." Lelouch babbled out before thinking. There were so many things there that could hurt Kallen, or make her misunderstand.

"I… know all that. No matter how I think about it, there could not have been a better solution than this. If you had lived there would be no peace and I would still be fighting for my cause, or I would be dead, but…" Kallen's voice was broken by tears and she sobbed every now and then while talking. The grip she had on Lelouch's fingers tightened and her sobs stopped.

"You're back… You really are back, Lelouch." Kallen said with a final sob wracking her body. "And that is all that matters. Are you hungry, Lelouch?" Kallen said and stood up from the floor. She kept on holding his hand for a couple of seconds after she was up and gave it a final squeeze before letting go. She quickly wiped her tears and walked over to the plate she had brought with the bottle of water. Lelouch now became aware of the mouth watering aroma the food was spreading in the air. He was starving. It was no surprise that you'd be rather hungry if you had died and then resurrected.

"Actually, I'm starving. What do you have there?" Lelouch asked and set himself in a more upright position. He didn't dare to try and move his legs after what happened with his arms. Kallen took a spoon and the plate and then sat down on the chair next to him again.

"Can you hold a spoon yet? You seemed rather weak earlier." Kallen said in an even voice. She tried to phrase the question in a way that would not hurt his pride, but the damage was already done. He tried making a fist and when he didn't have the strength to even do that he felt so very pathetic. But now that he thought about it, being spoon fed by Kallen wasn't so-

No, that was just wrong! He should never try and make excuses for a situation like this. Granted, him trying to eat on his own and soiling himself in the process would be more embarrassing, but he shouldn't succumb to the situation.

_Eat._

He was very hungry, but should he allow being spoon fed in this age? He could probably stand the hunger long enough to gain enough strength to eat himself, but would that be offending to Kallen's kindness? Well, it was not like she had actually offered to feed him, but judging by her behavior she would do it if the situation demanded it.

_Eat!_

He was not only hungry, his body was screaming for substance, but being spoon fed would be so… degrading. He was not sure if he could –

_I have to feed!_

**Karen**

Lelouch was sure taking his time answering her question, but it was not like she was not excepting this. Lelouch was a very proud person and being spoon fed would be very degrading for him. She didn't want him to starve himself just because he couldn't feed himself, but it wasn't like she would forcefully feed him if his pride got in the way… Well, not at first, at least. She wouldn't forgive herself if she let Lelouch kill himself just because of his pride, just when he came back from the dead.

Karen looked as Lelouch raised his right hand to his forehead and closed his eyes like he had a severe headache. She noticed how his fingernails turned white as he pressed down on his forehead and grimaced. Was he having a migraine attack? Well, considering he had been dead only hours before anything was possible.

"Lelouch, are you okay? Are you having a headache? I could go get you something for that…" Lelouch kept on pressing his spread out fingers on his forehead and cheekbone and started to breath heavily. She thought she saw him making two words with his mouth before his hand suddenly relaxed and his breathing came back to normal. Those words might have been "Stop it." but she couldn't be sure.

"Lelouch?" Karen asked. What the hell had that just been, A headache, a serious one at that if that were the case? Lelouch opened his eyes and stared straight forward. Karen was sure she saw his pupils dilating and constricting like the lens of a camera calibrating itself. She saw no emotion at all on his face to speak of and the way he lowered his arm to his side was frighteningly mechanical. The way his head turned to the right and then slowly scanned the room was also seriously creeping her out. Why was he acting like a robot all of a sudden?

"Lelouch, is everything alright? Are you feeling well, because you're acting kind of strange -" Karen stopped her sentence abruptly as Lelouch head snapped towards her as she spoke and his violet eyes focused on her. She flinched and couldn't do anything but stare back into his frighteningly empty eyes. The Lelouch looking at her now reminded her more of a puppet made in his image lying on her bed.

"Foo… Food. I would like… some food." Lelouch said in a strained voice and Karen also thought she heard a slight lisp in his voice. Lelouch tilted his head to the side like a puppy as she just stared at him in disbelief. "Kal… Kal… Kalren?"

Could it be brain damage? He had supposedly been dead for three days, so just because the wound on his chest had close up, it didn't mean that possible brain damage would be repaired so easily. Lelouch was talking like a child, or a demented foreigner. Should she keep on taking care of him, or would he be better off with professional help? No, that would make his whole plan of making a better world for his sister null and void. She didn't want that, so she should depend on outside help only in great distress.

"Kalren, food?" Lelouch asked with his eyes looking empty of a mind. Karen focused her eyes on his and only met a blank stare. The lights were on, but there was no one home. Well, at least for the moment she should keep on taking care of him and see about contacting someone she could trust if his condition worsened.

"Yes, food, I have food." Karen offered the plate and then when saw the blank stare he directed towards it she came to the conclusion that this Lelouch wouldn't care about his pride and scooped up a spoonful of vegetable soup."Now, open up, Lelouch."

* * *

**Yeah, it does kinda END, but that is as good of a point to end it as any. And it does leave a lot of open questions: What will happen to Karen? Is Lelouch driven out of his own body for good? Will Zapan hurt "Kalren"? What is Zapan anyways?**

**This, and more, will be answered in later chapters (and possibly in review replys, presuming you review).**

**Well, until next time. That might not be so fast as this time though, since I'll probably be working on my Bleach fic, Crimson Red Shadow. Do check that out while your waiting if you're interested.**

**Crazy Laughter  
**


	3. The Need

**Well, here it is! The third chapter of "What resides within"! I hope this chapter gets you thinking about a lot of things I've been thinking while writing this chapter, but well, as long as you review it's all good.**

**Have fun reading this installation of my random mind. I sincerely hope you enjoy!  
**

* * *

**Third Chapter**

**The Need**

Kallen watched as Lelouch swallowed spoonful after spoonful of the soup she had gotten from the kitchen. She had thought that Lelouch would be against her feeding him, sure, but didn't think that he'd mentally regress back into a child. It couldn't be that much of a shock could it? Lelouch had always acted with pride ruling him and this kind of situation would be humiliating for him, but still… She would think he would fight through it, not break down. Actually, she probably should have been the one to break down in this situation. Lelouch death had taken a toll on her and it would have taken her time to adjust to the thought that he was dead, but when Lelouch actually _came back _she had felt how her sanity was slipping down a slippery slope, but she had been able to function without losing her mind.

At least that's what she thought. She was still rather suspicious about Lelouch's "resurrection" but the way he was acting now would be too random and out of character for any con artist to do so that gave it a bit more credibility, right? But then again… Would a con artist be able to foresee that and put on this kind of act just for that reason? Could they be sure that she would think the way she was thinking now? She wasn't sure… they would have to be good and be able to read her and would also have to have done extensive research on her… But why would anyone bother putting on a show like this? It couldn't be to make her pilot the Guren Mk. II, could it? She had no reason to do so (well, not until she finished her studies, at least) and she couldn't think of any reason Lelouch's revival would give her any reason to do so…

"Kal…ren?" Lelouch's disturbingly childish voice said in a childish voice. She could not help but shiver when looking into Lelouch's empty and very innocent eyes. He was like a retarded puppy. His violet eyes opened wide and his face mostly expressionless, except for the curious look in his eyes that now also had spread to his face. He looked rather cute like this, actually. Not handsome, just cute and very, _very _out of character. Lelouch tilted his head to the side and one of his brows rose slightly. Karen couldn't believe it but she had to resist the urge to squeal. She never squealed…

Maybe she did go a little crazy after all.

Karen shook herself out of her thoughts and followed Lelouch's gaze and saw that the plate was empty. Just how long had she just sat there and stared at Lelouch with a empty spoon held out to him? Or had she kept on feeding air to him after she started thinking? The normal Lelouch would have said something for sure, but this one just stared at her and then said her name (mighty wrong, might I add) after what, a minute, two, or maybe even three minutes?

"I'm sorry for dazing out like that. Are you still hungry? I thought you shouldn't eat too much right after your… revival, but should I go get more?" Karen said while putting down the empty plate of soup. Lelouch's wide childish eyes followed her hands intently, like he was waiting for more food to magically appear on them. It was not like she could tell if he was hungry or not, but what other reason could he have for staring at her hands then? Well, he was acting like a retarded puppy already, so did he even need a reason?

"Food… Sustenance, yes… More food… please, Kalren." Lelouch said in a voice that had little to none of his usual confidence and bravado. It was weird that she hadn't noticed how dramatically he talked until he stopped being himself. Zero was a whole another story, but Lelouch as himself also talked rather dramatically. He was a good speaker and an inspirational leader. Karen had to wonder how much of that was because of his royal blood.

"O – Okay, I'll be right back. Don't… Never mind." Karen blushed a little and turned to the door as soon as she picked up the tray on the nightstand. She was going to say "Don't go anywhere" but that would seem clingy and in her ears it sounded like she didn't believe Lelouch was real. She would have probably seemed like she was crazy if she said that. Where would Lelouch go anyway if he even was able to stand?

**Zapan**

Zapan moved his head and saw what his vessel had called "windows" He saw dark brown branching structures with thin green things on them. He counted them; there were 487 that he saw, but the branching structures indicated that there was more where he couldn't see. If Zapan were to see the tree Zapan would have to move.

Yes, a tree, it was a _tree_ and the branching structures were _branches… _the thin green things were _leafs. _What had once been only the vessel's was now his, this Zapan knew. He knew this, but still he knew so little. Did his vessel know as little? Zapan and the vessel were one, but how come had Zapan felt… _dislocated, _dislocated was what Zapan had felt from the vessel. Why was that? The vessel was what held Zapan, could it even be more?

The vessel had named itself. Clearly named himself as Lelouch Lamperouge and Lelouch vi Britannia and Zero. Did vessels have names, many names? This Zapan did not know. Zapan did not know if vessels were more than vessels either, so maybe it could be so… There was so little Zapan knew, but still it could not be all that the vessel knew. Zapan and the vessel were one, this Zapan knew, but why was the vessel _different_? To be _one _you have to be the _same_, this Zapan also knew.

What appeared on the _branches _of the _tree _was alive, this Zapan knew. It moved, so it was alive. It was dull, so it was only a creature. It was small, so it was weak. It was not like Kalren, not at all like Kalren. Kalren was larger and brighter, so very much brighter than this dull thing. Kalren could speak and see and breathe and move. Kalren could do anything, but not this dull creature. This creature was stupid and erratic and afraid.

A _bird _was what this creature was called and it surprised Zapan to know that this dull creature could fly.

"Fl… Fly, bird… fly away, dull thing." Zapan said using the vessel's mouth and tongue. It was hard to get any air for the words. The words were also hard to come by when Zapan wanted to talk. Maybe this was because the vessel had named itself, maybe vessels did not have names, many names? The vessel was not a vessel, or maybe the vessel was… _broken/flawed/incomplete. _Maybe it needed to be fixed?

The dull creature flew away and the branch it had clung onto bounced up 19 times and down 18 times. Zapan turned the vessel's head back and saw the _ceiling_. Maybe he should confront the vessel and fix it? Maybe the vessel had too many names, maybe it wasn't supposed to have any at all, this Zapan thought.

Zapan needed more sustenance, more water. Zapan moved the vessel out of the _bed_ and on the _floor. _Zapan moved its legs and it stood up. Zapan moved its body and stayed up. Zapan was _balanced. _Zapan heard it calling; saw it flowing in the room beyond the hole in the wall. Zapan made the vessel move and it did, it walked.

The vessel walked into the space beyond the hole in the wall, the hole was framed for some reason. Like the hole had been made on purpose. It was constructed with the purpose of allowing entrance into this room with water. There was a name for it, this Zapan thought…

It was a _doorway _and the thing adjacent to it on one side was a _door_. The door could be placed to cover the hole in the wall and the wall would be whole again. No, that was not quite right; the wall would be closed, since the hole could be opened.

Zapan could hear the water; could feel it, but why couldn't Zapan see it? Where was it? Why would anyone hide something like water? So that no one would take it? Could Zapan take this water? Was this water Kalren's water? Kalren gave Zapan water before, but it was not from this room. What would happen if Zapan took Kalren's water?

She would _get mad_, said the vessel's mind. Kalren would be mad at Zapan and shout at him. Zapan did not want that. It would be better for Zapan to wait for Kalren to bring sustenance, water. That's what she went away for.

Zapan turned the vessel around and told it to walk back to the bed. It did, but before it reached the bed Zapan told it to stop and turn its head to the left. Zapan looked through the window and behind the branching structures of the tree he saw water. He could not feel it or hear it, but he saw it. This water was not hidden either, so Zapan could take it? Of course he could, it was a pool of water put right on display.

Zapan willed himself above the pool of water and felt great joy when he felt the vessel be surrounded with water, with sustenance.

**Karen**

Karen was walking up the stairs of the Stadfield manor when Zapan was thinking whether to take or not to take "Kalren's water". She had two more bottles of water and sandwiches the chef had whipped up rather fast taking into account how warm they were and how delicious they smelled. The chef was a merry man that had always insisted that she'd get "some meat on her bones" so her asking for more food all of a sudden just made him all the more merrier. He was a good man and Karen had always liked him, but it was not like she would miss him that much. He was Japanese and she hated how he acted towards her father and stepmother, like a slave. Well, she had to give him credit for the fact that he didn't start treating her any different after her association with the Black Knights was made public. It did make her feel a bit uncomfortable, but also a little relieved since he didn't start treating her like a savior or something.

Now _that _would have been uncomfortable. She got enough of that on the street from people she didn't know or barely knew. The confessions of love from total strangers were the situations she always felt like running from, but she had tried to be as polite as she could when encountering these people. She had only punched one of these people and that was because she had noticed his friends chuckling behind a corner. It had been a dare he had been put up to by his friends and everything in his behavior had pointed to that fact, so she did the only sensible thing: She informed him that she knew it was a prank, kicked him in the nuts and probably broke his nose with a straight jab. They picked the wrong day to mess with her.

Karen adjusted her grip on the plate of sandwiches. The chef had been so glad of her finally seeing the truth that she had given her at least a dozen of sandwiches he somehow had been able to make in less than ten minutes. The bread looked a little crispy on the surface and the filling between the crispy lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes smelled of spices and meat. Karen had not actually had any breakfast herself, so she could feel her mouth watering. Maybe she would miss that merry chef after all.

Karen reached her door and gave a suspicious glance left and right before opening the door. She opened her mouth to apologize for taking so long before she noticed that the bed was empty and she could not see Lelouch anywhere. How could he have gotten up in his state? He barely had the strength to eat, so how could he just walk away? Karen hurried to the nightstand and set down the plate of sandwiches and two water bottles. She looked at the bed again and saw how the covers were tumbled on the other side of the bed.

Karen felt like smacking herself on the forehead as she hurried around the bed. Of course Lelouch couldn't walk yet, or even stand for that matter. He had probably tried to do so because of his immense pride and had fallen off the bed. It was not like Karen could know what exactly his "condition" was, but what she did know was that Lelouch was very weak right now and had to stay in bed.

Karen got around the bed and saw that the covers were indeed on the floor with a single fluffy pillow, but there was no Lelouch in sight. Where could he have gone then? Karen thought of checking under the bed, but then felt stupid. Why would he do that? The bathroom, he had probably somehow gone in the bathroom. Karen turned around and saw that the door to the bathroom adjacent to her room was open and she didn't hear any sounds of water running, so he couldn't be there. She turned back towards the bed and thought of all the possible reasons Lelouch would crawl under the bed.

For the Lelouch she knew she couldn't think of a single rational explanation, but the Lelouch with empty eyes and a lisp could crawl under the after being frightened by something. "Lelouch, are you there? it's safe, you can come out now." Karen said while bending down to peek under the bed. She glanced left and right; no sign of Lelouch. She walked over to the plate of sandwiches and started eating one. She was hungry and she had grown accustomed to eating on the go. The sandwiches were just as delicious as they had seemed.

Where could Lelouch have gone? It hadn't looked like he was in the condition to even stand, but it wouldn't be the first time Lelouch tricked her. Did he walk out the door? Again she couldn't think of a reason for him to do it, but Lelouch had not been exactly himself lately. She knew that it would definitely be bad if anyone in the mansion saw Lelouch. Her step mother was a Britannian noble, the servants were Japanese and hated Lelouch and the guards were probably the same. She finished the sandwich and picked up another. She hadn't realized how hungry she was with the excitement of Lelouch _resurrecting _and all.

Karen walked over to the window and started scanning the backyard, or maybe she should say garden, of the Stadfield manor for any signs of Lelouch. She had no idea how Lelouch got in her room in the first place without disturbing anyone else in the mansion, so maybe he had just gone out the way he came. She scanned the grounds and saw no signs that the bushes under her window had been disturbed, or did she see Lelouch.

She was about to turn away and search the mansion when she noticed something strange in the corner of her eye. She looked in the direction she had seen something and saw the swimming pool glimmering in the sun. Was that what she had seen? Could have been, but she thought she had seen movement. She moved closer to the window and watched the pool. Now it had started to fume and she just could have sworn she saw it bubbling like it was boiling. She should definitely check it out before someone else noticed it or the person that was probably causing it.

Karen shot into action and ran out of the room with what was left of the sandwich hanging from her mouth. While she was running down the arched stairs three steps at a time she took the remnants of the sandwich out of her mouth, chewed, swallowed and then took another bite. She had literally been forced into eating on the run on several occasions. She had thought all that was behind her now, but that didn't seem like so. Her life seemed to stay as hectic and weird as it had always been, at least when compared to most girls her age. She tried to run as silently as she could not to attract attention to herself. She was almost absolutely sure that Lelouch was causing what was happening to the pool and no one in the mansion could see him. She didn't have the faintest clue as to how he was doing it, but it was probably him.

Why would she be surprised by any of this? Lelouch had already been able to kill people with a word before he died, so who knew what he'd be able to do after his resurrection? How was what he was doing now any different from what he had been doing before? He could manipulate the minds of others, so would it be such a stretch for him to be able to boil water with his mind?

Karen sped across the lawn and when she neared the swimming pool and took a hurried breath in because of her spurt to get there and then she felt like her lungs were burning and started coughing immediately. She backed away and breathed the cleaner air in with conviction. Chlorite, the stench of chlorite was heavy in the air and what she had run into was a patch the steam that was rising from the swimming pool. Her eyes watered and her chest was still burning. Chlorite was corrosive and she had inhaled it in aerosol form. She would have to watch out for any trouble breathing in the near future.

She turned her head towards the swimming pool and saw that the boiling had settled down considerably and there was only a few random bubbles breaking the surface here and there. It was strange that it had cooled from boiling that fast and that she had not felt any heat even when she had stepped closer while it was boiling. She blinked and stepped closer holding her sleeve over her mouth because of the chlorite still lingering in the air. The water was incredibly clear and calm considering it had been boiling just seconds ago.

She stepped closer and saw Lelouch sitting in the bottom of the pool. He blinked again and thought he saw something flash around his figure, like a small bright colored fish reflecting sunshine, but then it was gone. Karen stared at Lelouch and how he just sat with his legs crossed over each other submerged in water. She blinked and then thought she saw another flash of moving light in the water, this time shooting out from Lelouch and making a couple of lightning fast circles on the deadpan water. She blinked again and saw the water slightly stir in the place she thought she saw a light make a circle.

"Lelouch?" Karen asked with some hint of fear in her voice. He was just sitting there without taking a breath and she hadn't seen him move a muscle. She didn't except for him to hear her, but she flinched back when Lelouch turned his head towards her like he was just sitting on a floor in her room, not underwater. She realized that the movement was too quick and effortless for it to look natural underwater. "Lelouch, you'll have to get out of there, someone will see you."

Lelouch only smiled stupidly in response and the fact that no air escaped his mouth when he opened it underwater scared Karen. This was just too surreal. Could this Lelouch really be just a figment of her wounded psyche? She had taken Lelouch's death rather hard, but would she really become that delusional as to recreate him in her mind? Why would she make him be this weird and unlike Lelouch? Wouldn't her delusional image of Lelouch be… more like Lelouch?

"_Kalren, brilliant Kalren…" _Karen heard a ghastly voice whisper from somewhere on the edge of the water. Could there really be someone staying behind the edge of the pool, just out of her line of sight? If someone was, then who was it and why were they in the pool with Lelouch? Could that voice be Lelouch's? He had called her "Kalren" after his regression back into a child now that she thought about it. She took a hesitant step forward and peered down to the edge of the pool. She didn't see anyone else in the pool with Lelouch.

"_Kalren, you shine so brilliantly…" _The ghastly voice said in a gentle whisper that seriously creeped her out. She didn't see Lelouch's lips moving at all while she heard this and the water still stayed unnaturally calm. The surface of the water almost looked solid enough to walk on. She took another step closer without realizing it.

"_Come, Kalren. Play with me, brilliant Kalren." _The ghastly voice whispered so quietly it would have been impossible to hear it if the world hadn't become as silent and calm as the water all of a sudden. There should have been birds singing, leafs rustling in the wind, the sound of a car passing by; the background noise of the major city she was in, but there was nothing except for the call of the still water. Her rational mind understood this and tried to fight the impulse of stepping even closer to the edge of the water, there was something wrong here and it seemed she was unable to fight it. She took another step and the tips of her feet were over the edge of the pool. The water rose to meet her feet and she felt it pressing on her toes. Disregarding all of her rational side's pleas Karen took another step…

And the water supported her weight. The water was completely deadpan and felt as solid to stand on as the tiling at the water's edge. No, that wasn't quite right. The water felt warm and soft under her feet and that made Karen think of flesh, it kind of felt like she was standing on something living. It might have been just because of the mental image, but the water felt like it was throbbing. The water in the swimming pool didn't feel like thousands of liters of water anymore. Now it felt like a single living being, like the water was an extension of Lelouch.

"_Warm Kalren, you are warm." _The ghastly voice whispered; now it was louder and she heard it all around her. Was Lelouch talking through the water somehow? Karen looked down to Lelouch and saw that he was staring at her blankly. The water was so incredibly clear that she could make that out. Actually, since it was so still and clear it looked like there was no water in the pool. This thought made Karen notice another strange fact; the water did not reflect anything. That sounded impossible, but the water didn't reflect any shapes, or even the blueness of the sky. Spurred forward by this thought she looked down to where her reflection would be.

And saw her picture on the water's surface. Now, you might think that this would calm her a little and see that the situation wasn't completely surreal, but it did the exact opposite, since the picture reflected on the water wasn't her reflection. It was an image of her wearing the costume she wore while piloting her knightmare stained in blood and holding a heavily decorative long sword in her right hand. Her hands were drenched in blood and the eyes that stared back at her from the image on the water had no remorse or regret in them, like she didn't regret betraying Le –

Karen stepped back with fear and shock clenching her chest tight and making it hard to breathe. She stepped back from fright, but she still couldn't turn her eyes away from her reflection. Now she saw how the image of her holding the sword that killed Lelouch without remorse went out of focus because of the ripples her step made on the water's surface. She saw how it rearranged again to form another image. It was still her own image that stared back at her, but the one under the water was a considerably younger version of her, maybe around five years old. The younger version of her was wearing a simple white summer dress that left her arms and shins bare.

The younger version of her was smiling at her with all the innocent joy only children can muster; this might have made her smile if there wasn't a sharp looking knife in the girl's hand. The fact that the girl was covered in blood wasn't really reassuring either. Her arms were drenched in blood and Karen thought she saw what looked like pieces of flesh in the girl's hair, in _her _hair, the formerly white summer dress was a dark brown color because of the dried up blood covering it. The girl stared her in the eye and then raised the hand not holding a knife to wave at her terribly innocently.

_Hi there, been a while!_

Karen saw the girl's lips move, but she didn't hear any voice come out, not quite. She just suddenly knew what the reflection had said. What was this exactly? It couldn't be her supposed insanity talking to her, could it? Was she that far gone into madness, really? How did that happen, why did that happen?

_Stuuu-pid!_

Karen focused her eyes back on her reflection on the water and saw that the girl had her hands on her small hips and was bending down to look at her sternly. Her behavior was so very childish, but it was hard to ignore the blood, so the girl really creeped her out.

"Why are you calling me stupid?" Karen asked before she was able to stop herself. Now she was talking to her delusions. Great. Her delusion only stared at her like she had asked a very stupid question.

_How many people have we killed? I stopped counting at 150, how 'bout you?_

The other her smiled and pointed at her with the knife in her hand. She was smiling that pure and innocent smile with a blood stained face when the reflection scattered and the water rippled all on its own. She was still staring at the point where the reflection's eyes had been just a second ago. She closed her eyes and tried to wish all of this madness away. She kept her eyes shut even when she felt how the water under her feet slid away, moved like it was alive. Now she was hesitant if she wanted to open her eyes at all.

"_What's that, brilliant Kalren? What is it, that… feeling?" _The ghastly voice with a lisp said, but now it was different, since she could locate the voice now. It was right in front of her, it sounded like it was only inches away from her face. She didn't want to open her eyes; she really didn't want to see what was using that voice. She was quite adamant on keeping her eyes shut when she felt something touch her lower lip. She threw her head back from fright and opened her eyes.

What she saw wasn't anything she could have expected to see. What she saw a mass of water rising from the pool. She couldn't really describe it in any more detail since it was constantly changing shape. One moment it was in a shape that somewhat resemble a human standing with their arms to their sides and a couple of seconds later it was just a curving pillar of water bending towards her. The constant and rapid movement was even more eerie because it was not making a single sound while shifting into different shapes. All of the shapes were directed towards her and there was a green sliver of light moving inside the water. She had thought it had been just a fiction of her imagination, but now it was right in front of her and it really wasn't anything more than that, a sliver of light. It didn't seem to have a shape, but it moved too fast for her to make anything out. Karen took another step back, it followed her.

"Lelouch, are you doing this?" Karen said and jumped at how loud her voice was in the strange stillness by the water. She glanced down past the form of water and saw that Lelouch was at the bottom of the pool, but now it wasn't as easy looking as before. Lelouch was floating in the bottom with his legs crossed and his hands were floating by his sides. He was looking at Karen intently and Karen noticed that his eyes were wide open and full of emotion, pleading. His mouth was moving like he was talking, but she didn't hear the eerie whisper. She glanced at the mass of water and was surprised how close it was to her. The water was almost touching her skin and as crazy as it might sound it felt like the sliver of light was staring at her, intently.

"_You are changing, brilliant Kalren… The light flows, changes… Pretty." _Karen heard the eerie whisper say and the light swam in circles inside the water. Was the voice that small light? How could that be? Had she really seen it swimming around Lelouch's body earlier? What was going on here exactly? Karen turned her attention back to Lelouch at the bottom of the pool. He started moving his mouth again, as if trying to make words. She watched intently and tried to make out what he was trying to say. She watched intently as Lelouch repeated a sentence of three to four words again and again while the light in the water stared at her.

"I… S? N…T… M…" Karen mumbled as she deciphered the movements of Lelouch's mouth. It was rather hard to see what someone was saying when you couldn't hear them at all. From what he could make out was that it was a three or four word sentence and the words were rather short on their own. So… what the hell could that mean? Lelouch wasn't using his hands to signal the point he was trying to get across, like he was unable to. She glanced at the mass of water that had been staring at her and noticed that it had gotten smaller. It had shrunken into a lump of swirling water rising above the still surface of the water and the light inside it had slowed down, but was still intently staring at her.

"_Play with me, Kalren. Stay and play with me." _She heard the eerie voice say and suddenly felt the surface of the water give out under her briefly. Her feet sunk into the water, but then bounced back up again and she ended up on her knees on the solid surface of the water. The water felt more soft and cold to the touch, freezing actually. She raised her hand off the surface and saw that it glistened with the water on it. Did the water retain its reflective properties when taken away from this main body? Seemed like it.

She placed her hand back on the water's surface in order to try and get up, but then stopped. When she pressed down on the water it didn't budge, but with the pressure applied a stain in the water that looked awful a lot like blood spread from her hand. She didn't feel like she had cut herself, but still immediately raised her hand from the water and looked at it. The skin on her palm was unscathed and she could not see a wound on her hand, but the blood remained, even on her hand.

_Play with me too, Karen! It's been a while, hasn't it?_

Kallen focused on her reflection again and saw the little girl covered in blood staring at her again. She watched as the girl theatrically bent down and touched the stain of blood on the water with her knife. The blood started swirling and she thought she could make something out, but she didn't know what. An eerie smile that didn't belong in her innocent features played on the girl's lips.

_Play with us, Karen! They've been especially lonely!_

The girl shouted and then laughed wholeheartedly. She felt like running away as fast as she could when she realized what the swirling pictures in the blood were. They were the faces and disfigured bodies of all the people she killed swirling and mixing together.

The water under her left hand gave in and she felt the freezing cold water stinging at her arm. She saw a cloud of dark red blood form around her arm. She yanked her hand above the surface and felt the warm blood covering her arm and making the sleeve of her shirt feel heavy. She was more scared of looking down and seeing all the faces in that large cloud of blood than dying of blood loss at this point. This was real, not an illusion anymore, but was that blood really hers, or her victims? She couldn't see or feel any cuts the blood could have come out of when she was not touching the water. Still, she should get out from over the water before it totally gave out and she would be drowned in the blood staining her hands.

She tried to stand up and run out of the pool while the water could still support her and could run a couple of steps before the water under her gave out and she plunged into the water. She hit her wrist on the edge of the pool and a numbed twinge of intense pain shot up her arm. She opened her eyes in the water and immediately regretted it. She could only see the blood and the hatred and despair of her victims.

_I'm going to die… I'm really going to die here. Killed by the blood of the people I've killed… I deserve this. I killed for him, I failed him, I betrayed him, I killed him and I stayed silent and allowed the world to hate him._

_And now I will die for him…_

**Lelouch**

What the hell was this thing doing? First it takes over his body to eat and as soon as Kallen leaves the room it wanders around driven by some kind of _need_ Lelouch couldn't really call hunger from his viewpoint. It was something he had a hard time determining, but it was still there bugging him even though he wasn't the one "driving" at the moment. After this thing somehow _teleported,_ actually _teleported_, out of Kallen's room and dived into the pool Lelouch felt his consciousness fling back into his body, but he still couldn't move. He saw and felt how the thing inside him reached out and did something to the water, bending it to its will.

What happened after that puzzled him and made him fear the thing inside him. After a couple of minutes of the entity inside him darting around and left him sitting in the bottom of the pool Kallen's face appeared above the water. He couldn't move his head on his own, so he only caught a glimpse of her red hair, but after she called his name he was sure. It was Kallen and she didn't like that he was out of her room. He could understand her distress, since he could remember how he had died and all, but the entity's reaction surprised him. It was just pure joy, childish joy of seeing a familiar person and calling them to join their play. At least that was the impression he got from his perspective. He actually felt the thing's feelings as it did, so as its thoughts went he could only guess, but it was a good guess.

Kallen's body straightened and then started walking towards the water. Lelouch wanted to shout and warn her to stay away, but he still didn't have any control over his own body. Did the water somehow make the thing stronger, since it could control him even though it was out of his body? It certainly did seem like it, but he didn't actually know that it hadn't been this strong to begin with. Lelouch wanted to move and tried his best to do so when he saw Kallen walking straight into the pool, looking quite dazed. She walked off the edge and fell into with the water. She did not make a splash, since the water only flexed under her and she slowly _slipped _into the water instead of falling into it.

Lelouch's attempts of freeing his own body became even more frantic after he saw that Kallen was too dazed to get her head above the water on her own. If she inhaled water it would be over for her. At least it seemed that Kallen was not trying to breathe underwater, since only a couple of bubbles escaped from her mouth. Well, he was presuming that Kallen had taken a breath before diving in, but if Kallen didn't snap out of whatever trance she was in she would drown. Lelouch flexed his arm anyway he could and finally could move his arms like he was fighting against some unknown force trying to return his arms to their original position. Was he really able to overpower this thing now that it was outside of his body? How could he even breathe underwater? How did this thing make that possible? Could it do the same for Kallen?

No, he shouldn't trust that the immature and simple thing dwelling within him would do that. It was so foreign as a being to him that he couldn't even start to understand how its mind worked. Lelouch moved his eyes in search of the said being and also noticed that he could move his head if he strained his muscles enough. He glanced at Kallen and saw that the green light he identified as the entity inside him was slowly, at least compared to its previous pace, swimming close to Kallen's skin. Circling up her arms, going inside her shirt, circling her neck, slightly disturbing her hair when exploring her head's shape. It was clearly curious and trying to memorize Kallen. Maybe the reason he was not able to find it before was because it was exploring her body _inside _Kallen's clothes?

Somehow, that made him fight even harder. He could already move his hands somewhat freely and he started to try and free his legs from whatever this force was that was keeping him still. It seemed that he could work it out of his muscles. He started twisting his body every which way to get rid of the deterring force in his torso while also trying to stretch his legs. It seemed to be faster if he worked a lot of muscles at once. He saw bunch of bubbles come out of Kallen's mouth. The lack of oxygen was making her survival instinct scream for her to breathe, contradicting itself. Why did this entity, Zapan, want to kill Kallen?

Wait, he didn't feel that constant _need _anymore. Did it lure Kallen in the water to fulfill that need? Was it feeding right now, exploring her body like that? It could also be that his struggle to get out of Zapan's control had disturbed their connection and he could not feel it because of that. It could also be wishful thinking on his part, since he did not feel comfortable sharing a body with a thing that had the need to drown people. It was a relief not having it eating at the back of his mind like a mental form of an addiction though.

Lelouch flexed his legs and decided that he was able to move well enough now to try and swim. He saw another bunch of bubbles come out of Kallen's mouth and saw a defeated and scared look in her eyes before she flinched and gulped at least a mouthful of water into her lungs. Lelouch felt a wave of frustration flush over him as he realized he might be unforgivably late by now. Getting water out from the lungs by doing CPR was a long shot at best. The green light that supposedly was Zapan was whirling around Kallen's head excitedly, like it was enjoying seeing her drown. It truly was a monster if it could do that after those emotions Lelouch felt with it towards Kallen (very strange and creepy by the way).

Lelouch wrapped his hands around Kallen and then kicked them both up towards the surface with his feet. He thought that Zapan would do something to try and stop him from saving its victim, but it only followed Kallen up, whirling around both of them. Lelouch broke through the surface and then tried his best to fight the urge to take a breath, since his lungs were filled with water and he gagging it out right now wouldn't help. He would have to get Kallen out of the pool first. She wrapped one of his arms around Kallen and then started swimming towards the edge of the pool with his feet and the other arm, just like he had seen on TV. The time it took to get to the edge of the pool felt like an eternity and later he thought that it could have been Zapan slowing him down, but right then he was feverishly going through the steps of CPR in his head.

Lelouch was able to get to the edge of the pool and practically threw Kallen out of the water with strength he didn't know he possessed. He thought it was just the adrenaline and continued to properly get her out of the water Zapan had somehow claimed as his own. Lelouch pushed himself out of the pool and felt an electrifying jolt as Zapan went back into his body, but gladly didn't take over his body then and there. Lelouch turned to the side and placed his hand on his chest and then pressed down as hard as he could. He vomited and gagged out the water in his lungs and when he felt his lungs were clear of water he turned back to Kallen.

Lelouch flipped Kallen on her back, put his left hand under her neck and lifted slightly to open the airway. He used his right to pinch her nostrils shut and then breathed rapidly a couple of times to oxidize the air in his lungs. After this he was pretty sure he had done it right and placed his lips over Kallen's and blew air into her lungs. He repeated this process three times and then placed his hands on the center of her ribcage and pressed down 15 times. He paused and then repeated the process.

**Karen**

_It was cold and dark where she was, but it was serenely quiet. She could not remember who she was, had been, or was supposed to be. Everything was, is and always will be dark, cold and peaceful._

_And that was okay._

_Wasn't this what those… the description she was searching for was lost to her, but she had a feeling that this kind of serene peace had been something someone somewhere had sought. Many people actually, at least that's what she thought she remembered. Was it fair for her to reach something like this before them?_

"Hey!"

_Go away. You're loud._

"But aren't you cold?"

_It doesn't matter anymore. It is peaceful and I don't need you anymore, so go away!_

"You say it's peaceful, but you're the one shouting, aren't ya?"

_This is peace and you're not to disturb it. A lot of people have sought for this kinda thing, you know._

"Well, it's not that I want to disturb your _peace_ or anything, but _he _is rather adamant on keeping us around."

_Who, Him, the burning point of our regret?_

"Yep, that's the one."

…

"The real world awaits."

***

Karen became conscious of a suffocating presence in her chest and immediately after that of her chest convulsing to regurgitate the fluid from her lungs. She coughed violently and felt how her mouth filled with water and it spewed out of her mouth. She turned to the side and kept coughing out the water for a time that felt like an eternity. She tried to breathe, but the coughing stopped her from doing that and she only saw a mix of black spots and neon bright spots of green. She tried blinking them away and as she started to be able to breathe she became aware of her surroundings. She was on the edge of the swimming pool on the grounds of the Stadtfield mansion and every single animal on the grounds was making an ungodly racket. The birds were screeching like they were being harassed by eagles and the crickets and cascadas were all singing around them, making an impenetrable wall of high-pitched singing around her. What could make them so panicked?

She flinched and then became aware of her aching body and the throbbing pain in her left wrist. _It was real; _she thought as she remembered what had happened to her in the pool. What was that all about and more importantly who rescued her? Karen turned herself back on her back and looked up at the blue sky. She could see the frantically chirping birds flying circles around her and making sudden dives towards her. She knew from experience that this was how they acted when they felt that their nests were threatened, but that was impossible, since they had not made their nests anywhere near the pool. Karen followed one bird as it flew away after another mock dive towards her and noticed that Lelouch was on his knees next to her, still as naked as ever. She blushed by reflex, but felt too beaten to even feel ashamed. She tried to focus her eyes on his and see if he still had that deadpan look in them. She wanted to know which Lelouch she was dealing with.

"We have to get inside, quick. Just lay still, I'll try something." Lelouch stated in a confident tone. It was definitely not the other Lelouch now. She was glad, maybe this madness was a passing thing and Lelouch would figure out what to do himself, since doing that for him felt like a little too much for her right now. She focused on breathing and not moving her injured left hand. The realization that she had been dead for a moment there slowly dawned on her. She's been in battle countless times and she had always been scared for her life, but now she had actually given up and had been swallowed whole by the fear of death. If all that just happened really was more in her head, then the fear of death would be the blood of her victims that surrounded her.

She flinched slightly when she felt Lelouch's hand pressing down on her abdomen. Lelouch turned away from her and stared at the window of her room while not letting go of her stomach. He glanced back at her quickly and turned back to staring at her window. After a few seconds she felt like something big brushed against her. It was more of a feeling than a sensation; like if you were diving in dark and murky waters and then felt a large shadow move next to you. The feeling didn't go away and only intensified as Lelouch kept staring at her window. What was he doing? She was just about to open her mouth and ask when something made the world disappear. One second she was lying on the wood paneling lining the pool and on the next she was in a cold and dark place where there was nothing and then she was lying on the soft carpet of her own room in the Stadtfield mansion.

"Wh – How… What did you do just now?" Karen asked Lelouch. Lelouch didn't answer her, walked to her bed and pulled the covers around his body. Either he was cold, or he didn't want to be naked around her. It was still such a normal thing to do that it made her even surer that he was the Lelouch she remembered. Lelouch turned towards her and then sat on the edge of the bed with a very serious expression. He didn't seem like he had even heard the question and even though he was looking in her general direction it didn't seem like he could see her. He was very deep in thought. Usually she wouldn't interrupt a thinking Lelouch, but now she just didn't have the patience.

"How did you get us up here from the pool, Lelouch?" Karen asked, raising her voice slightly. She sat up on the floor and was glad that she wasn't completely immobilized. She pulled her legs under her and then carefully tried to stand. Her legs could carry her, but she was still shaking too much to stay standing. Lelouch watched her with worry shining from his face, worry and fear. She sat back down on the floor and saw how Lelouch's hands were shaking before he set them on his lap. He was sitting upright on the bed, very on edge, like he was afraid that the roof would come down.

"I… was _resurrected _for a reason I do not know…" He emphasized the word "resurrected" strongly, like he wanted to make a point of the fact that he had actually died. "And… I think there's something else inside me now." Lelouch stated and then fell silent. It was not like he was having a dramatic pause to sell his point. He genuinely looked at a loss for words, first time Kallen had _ever _seen him like that. She had thought it was one of those things that could happen, but never did. Lelouch Lamperouge, Zero, at a loss for words, preposterous! Before Kallen could say anything Lelouch continued his story.

"As to how I did that just now…" Now Lelouch did pause for a moment, but she doubted that it was on purpose. She could see a sadistic smile play at Lelouch's lips. "The thing inside me has _power._" This statement made Karen flinch from fright and thankfully it did the same for Lelouch. He flinched at his own words and pressed his hand on his mouth. She could see fear and a stubborn hint of excitement in his eyes.

"Let me start from the beginning…" Lelouch said in a tired tone and then proceeded to tell her everything that had happened before he had appeared in her bedroom. When he stopped talking he looked at Karen waiting for a reply.

She fainted.

**Nunnally**

Nunnally woke up feeling a lot calmer than she thought she would. She thought that the grief would strike her like a freight train the moment she became aware of the reality, but that didn't happen, instead of crashing down on her reality seeped into her world gradually. She became aware of the fact that her brother was gone and the world was expecting her to guide it to a new future. This brought with it the heavy bounds of responsibility, which could have made her posture drop if she actually could walk. She knew now that the state of her body was because of a power called Geass and that she had been able to overcome the Geass that stopped her from seeing, but overcoming something like deteriorated leg muscles AND a Geass was a little much to ask. Suzaku was being himself and pressured her to try anyways in the kindest way possible, but still. She was glad to have the chance to try and tried her hardest to exercise the mostly unused muscles in her legs while fighting the Geass placed to stop them from moving.

Nunnaly sat up in her bed and looked at her big room. It was just as lavish and comfy as any other rooms she'd been to, but it was accommodated to her needs to the extent that it felt it was built solely for her and that made it feel it was too luxurious. Suzaku of course reminded her, as subtly as possible; that she was the center of the world's attention and if she was not accommodated properly the world would be in a needles uproar over her comfort, so she should try and deal with the needles pampering.

As soon as Nunnally was done brooding over these subjects she slid herself over to her wheelchair on the edge of the bed and wheeled herself into the bathroom and relieved herself. Then she dressed herself without hurry without calling anyone for help. It was laughably easy, since she had learned to do it while still being blind. Being able to see the clothes she was putting on did help quite a lot, even though it was still hard with her practically paralyzed legs. After she was dressed she pressed the button to call Zero, aka Suzaku to her. From what she understood her pressing the button meant that an alarm went off in Zero's helmet and she didn't want to disturb Suzaku too much.

It took only 23 seconds for Suzaku to appear at the door. He never burst through the door in a hurry when called, he appeared. He opened the door and let himself in, making as little attention to himself in the process. If she hadn't been waiting for him she might have missed him. And it normally took Suzaku exactly 30 seconds to appear at the door, so there had been some kind of disturbance during the night that had kept him awake. She had to wonder what kind of disturbance it had been for him to be a whole of seven seconds early.

"Did anything happen while I was asleep?" Nunnally asked and looked Suzaku directly in the eyes. Suzaku might have thought that it was not possible to look him in the eye with the mask, but she still could focus her eyes on the points where his eyes would be without the mask. It was not like Lelouch was the only in the family with a highly analytical mind. She had never played chess, but she thought she'd be quite good at it.

"No, there was nothing that would require your direct attention. There was a slight disturbance by a single insurgent, but it was dealt with swiftly." Suzaku said with a slightly nervous tone. He was a terrible liar, "nothing that would require your direct attention" meant in this case that she shouldn't look into it further and that was a line she heard often, but what was this about a "single insurgent"? Had someone really got close enough for Suzaku to mention it in his indirect report of what had happened while she was asleep?

Nunnally moved to the window and watched the scene unfolding outside with interest. There seemed to be a creature that looked awful lot like an anteater surrounded by the guards. The guards looked unsure as to what they should do as the anteater stood up on its back legs and spread its forearms like it was challenging the guards to try and make a move. One of the guards lunged at the anteater and the said creature started scratching the said guard trying to contain it with a fury that could only be found in wild animals.

"What did this "single insurgent" do?" Nunnally asked Suzaku as he was making his way to her. She turned away from the scene of the guards assigned to protect her being mauled by an anteater and pinned Suzaku in place with her eyes. Ever since she had them back she kept finding more and more ways to use them and this was one of the most useful ones. "Did he get all the way to my room? I noticed the black stains on the sheets, so don't try and deny it." That was a lie, she had just noticed that there were some smudges on her sheets, but Suzaku didn't have to know that.

"I… I – I am sorry! I have failed in my mission to protect you. It is true that a single insurgent got through the defenses I set up myself and was able to spend a minute or so with your person. He was quickly captured and then surrendered to the proper authorities." Suzaku said while bowing his head to her. She knew that he was lying about something just from the way he talked, but decided to let it go this time, since she knew the reason for his secrecy.

The sign of her sin itched terribly, but she fought back the urge to scratch it while Suzaku was there. He was just the kind of person that would demand to see what was wrong and try and fix it. It was her sin and her responsibility alone. Bringing her own brother back from the grave just because of her grief was a burden she should bear on her own shoulders alone.

* * *

**Well, that was interesting, wasn't it?There was an anteater that was saying "FUCK YOU!" to the world and Nunnally's guilt from somehow resurrecting her brother. Does this have something to do with Zapan? Is Zapan what it is all about? How in god's name did it happen? Nunnally wouldn't make a deal with the forces unknown, would she?**

**Well, ain't this getting interesting?** **Read and review!**


	4. Cruelty

**Hi there! Ain't it a bitch that I update this story so slowly? Well, there was the thing that my computer committed suicide while I was in Ireland, so this is the rewritten version, so there, that's my excuse.**

**And another thing, this time about Kallen's name. She is called by three "different" names; Kallen, Karen and Kalren. Kallen is what "Karen" sounds when said by japanese people, so Suzaku and Lelouch call her that, because she was introduced to them in Japan and she had accepted that thepeople around her had a hard time pronouncing it right. She calls herself Karen, because I think that's more "Britannian" and her real name. Zapan calls her Kalren, because he just does. It's quirk of his, so deal with it.**

**Okay, enjoy and review!  
**

* * *

**Fourth Chapter**

**Cruelty**

Lelouch watched Kallen's crumbled form in shock for what felt like a minute. He was in shock of releasing that he was possessed by something that had the power to reanimate a dead body, but with the mind of a child, so his thoughts were moving rather sluggishly. He brought both his hands up to his temples and rubbed them like he had a headache. He didn't have even the slightest hint of a headache, but he had to do something with his hands while he thought about what to do. He actually felt amazing, considering he had been dead less than a day ago. The thing inside him had fell silent for the moment as well, so he almost felt normal. He had to come to terms with the fact that he really was sharing his body with something even more incredible than Geass.

"But the more pressing problem is: what do with Kallen?" He said out loud to stop himself from getting stuck thinking about his own problem called Zapan. Yes, Kallen fainting in her own room was more urgent than his own body's problems. If someone were to come in and see her drenched and crumbled on the floor it would drastically decrease his chances of going unnoticed in the Stadtfield mansion. Maybe he should find some servant's clothes so he could move around the mansion without drawing too much attention to himself. He would have to find some way to cover his face though, he had been an international tyrant before he had died, so his face was hated and well known.

He got up from the bed and spread the covers back on it and then flipped them open, so he could set Kallen down on the bed and cover her with them. It would look like she had gone back to bed after taking a shower to someone who came in through the door. It was all he could do right now and without taking off her clothes. He would just have to hope the warmth of the covers would stop her from getting a cold. It would be troublesome if she was to get sick now, but she had done more for him than he deserved. His existence could only bring trouble to the people around him, so why had he been resurrected and by whom?

He started to wonder if he would be able to carry Kallen to the bed without making too much noise that would raise attention. He had never been in very good shape and he doubted he could raise Kallen up in his arms as easily it looked like in the movies. Kallen was lean in build, but her clothes were drenched with water and her trained muscles and those breasts must weigh a lot. And to top it all off she was dead weight, so it would be even harder to stay balanced while carrying her weight. Lelouch sighed, walked over to where Kallen was and then bent down on one knee and slipped his hands under her back and behind her knees. He kept a firm grip with his hands, kept his back straight and lifted with his legs.

He stumbled back when it felt like he was lifting a pillow, rather than an unconscious body and then became aware that Kallen wasn't in his arms anymore. He looked up in disbelief and saw that Kallen had reached the pinnacle of her trajectory and was now starting her descent. Half a dozen half-formed thoughts rushed through his mind before he was able to tell his body to step back and catch her before she fell on top of him. He caught her with his hands finding the places he had used to lift her instinctively and bent with his knees to soften her landing. She still felt way lighter than she should have felt like, but if he started to think about it now he would freeze up. He quickly walked over to the bed, the burden her weight put on him only showing in his heavy footsteps. He set her down and pulled the covers up to her neck. Now, if he were not anywhere in sight, it really did look like she had gone to sleep after a shower. At least that's what he hoped it would look like and he had too much going through his head to think of any faults in this hastily conceived plan.

He stormed into the bathroom adjacent to Kallen's bedroom and started drinking water straight from the tap. Why was he able to lift Kallen so easily? Whenever he tried to lift something equivalent to Kallen's weight before he had been drenched in sweat and his legs had buckled under him. He had been fine while carrying the frail weight of his sister, but Kallen must have weighed three times more than Nunnally ever did. And the power required to sling Kallen into the air like that was more than he would have been able to muster at any point in his previous life. And why was he so thirsty all of a sudden? How long had he been drinking the water and why had he not thought anything about the impulse when it hit him in the first place? He spat out the last mouthful of water and jumped away from the tap more because of surprise than anything else.

"What the hell is going on? Do I have super strength now?" Lelouch said aloud again and this time he had no excuse. He was getting too worked up about this. He would have to calm down and think about what to do next. Having superhuman strength would definitely be useful, but if his body had superhuman strength, then so did the thing inside him and he didn't trust it to have the restraint not to hurt people unintentionally, or intentionally. It had tried to drown Kallen with some kind of power it had over her mind, so if you factored its inexplicable affection for Kallen and its sadistic impulses in the situation the probability of it escalating into something catastrophic was more he liked. He had to calm down and think of a way out of this and fast, before it took control again. Kallen was unconscious and there was no telling what it would do with a defenceless target.

Okay, what did he know about the thing inside him? It was mentally only a child, but also possessed powers just as powerful, or even more powerful, than Geass. It could take control of his body, but only for limited periods of time and seemingly only had control over these powers when controlling his body. Only if he knew some way to stop it from taking over, but the thing had a rather tight grip on him, it didn't even seem to think of him as a person. Hadn't it called him a vessel at some point? If it only thought of him as an empty vessel, then was it just a coincidence that it was his body it had inhabited, or was it because of the Geass imprinted in his brain that gave it the chance? Hell, this thing could be the Code his father and CC had. Neither one of them were exactly sane and his Geass seemed to be more powerful than theirs, so wouldn't it make sense that his Code was stronger as well? No, that was just speculation, he should focus on the facts he knew for sure. Acting on speculation would be stupid and foolhardy at this point, but he didn't have that many certain facts about this thing. He didn't even know if it could or could not live outside his body. He thought it had left his body when he was in the pool, but that was not sure either, that might just have been a probe of sorts.

_Vessel, why do you think?_

Lelouch didn't flinch or get surprised by the words, it wasn't like he heard a voice or saw hallucinations. He just somehow became aware of the question and who was making it. It wasn't like the thing was talking _into_ his mind, it was already _in_ it. Would he have to say his thoughts out loud, or could it read his thoughts? Had it done that before, or did it have to grab his whole consciousness, like he presumed it had done before, to converse with him? Was it looking through his eyes and feeling through his senses, like he had done after he had been resurrected? There were too many unanswered questions and Lelouch tried to get an answer to at least one while concentrating on the words "Because I am a person, not a vessel". He waited for several minutes while repeating the words in his mind. The thing was rather slow, so it could be it was contemplating on his answer.

He had kept on leaning on the wall opposite of the large mirror and the vanity with his eyes closed, but now his eyes opened without his volition and focused on the mirror as it suddenly frosted over. It didn't gradually spread out like you would see in some movies, but it appeared in less than two seconds. The characters that appeared on it came to existence slower, like someone was writing them that had to stop and think about the next character to write. Where had it learned how to write Japanese characters anyway? Maybe there was some kind of connection between their minds, but neither of them was consciously aware of it.

"_Why do you think?" _Was written on the frost on the mirror after Lelouch watch the characters form and reform as the thing struggled to write Japanese characters to form its thoughts for a full minute. It might have been a child psychologically, but its capacity for learning was frightening. Well, it was supposedly inside Lelouch's mind and he had a tendency to think in Japanese and Japanese characters, so... well, it was still impressive. He found that he was still perfectly in control of his own body, so he leaned forward and wrote next to the question the answer he had been trying to tell it through his mind. "Because I am a person, not a vessel"

The characters that made out its question started changing shape like they were living things and gradually settled into the shapes of another simple sentence, this time it took around 50 seconds. _"Define what a person is." _The writing on the mirror said and his previous answer was again covered by frost. This thing might have been like a child intellectually, but it was no doubt resourceful. It had figured out a conventional way for them to communicate without inconvenience for him, or it. He actually had to think about the thing's question, Zapan, that was its name. Theological debates weren't his strong suite, but how to describe what a person is to something that isn't human?

"Something that is able of sentient thought. Something that has a name. Bright." Lelouch finally wrote after thinking about it for a full minute. He had no idea why he added the last definition, but he didn't feel like it was wrong, but also didn't know why it was right. Maybe the leaking of thoughts was a two way street, maybe he was subconsciously learning things from it as well. How else could he have known how to teleport into Kallen's room, now that he thought about it? It also made him worry that the leaking of thoughts would escalate and their minds would meld. Maybe that was supposed to happen, it would at least explain Zapan's behaviour towards him, the "vessel" and all that. The characters that made out Zapan's query were already changing and searching for a shape. The motion reminded him of the space within darkness and surrounded by flowing walls. Had the really been Zapan that had watched him through that eye, or had it just been a complex nightmare spurred forth because of his resurrection? Again, he had too many uncertainties to properly access the situation. He forced himself out of his thoughts and checked if Zapan had given a reply to his answer.

"_Kalren is a person, you are not." _Was what Zapan had written on the mirror and the statement puzzled Lelouch. He wasn't a person by the standards he had given in Zapan's opinion? But he had proven he was able of sentient though and had given all of his aliases to him for some reason, so he had a name and was able of sentient thought. Zapan couldn't be hung up on that concept of him not being "bright", could it? That was just a slip up he had made while bring influenced by some side-effect of his resurrection! Well, he just had to go along with it, since it didn't seem probable he could convince Zapan of anything through logical debate. He would have to play by its rules for now.

"You cannot see the light behind your eyes." Lelouch wrote next to his previous answer as it had not disappeared yet. It would be bad for him if Zapan did not think of him as a person. Zapan thinking they were somewhat equal was the only way for Lelouch to gain any kind of leverage over Zapan, since he was rather sure he was smarter than it. All the characters on the mirror were covered by the frost Zapan had somehow conjured on it. For some reason Lelouch thought it was pouting and taking it out on him by cutting the only way of communication between them. Either it felt threatened, because it was about to lose a debate, or Lelouch had made a mistake presuming the "brightness" was the issue. The lines that made out the characters returned and formed the words considerably faster than before, in 14 seconds by his count.

"_Go to Kalren."_ Were the words written on the frosted over mirror before the frost changed into a thin veil of condensed water on the mirror's surface and the words became considerably harder to make out. Despite the awkward spelling of her name, it was obvious who Zapan meant. He was aware of Zapan's obvious affection for Kallen, but after he had attempted to drown her he was extremely suspicious of Zapan's motives this time. He didn't want to think how easy it would be for Zapan to strangle her, or smother her with a pillow if his body really was endowed with superhuman strength after his resurrection. The thought of getting as far away from Kallen to stop Zapan did cross his mind, but then was immediately shot down as a proactive way of dealing with the situation. He had teleported across the world, so there was no way he could get enough distance between him and Kallen to keep her safe. He felt defeated and dreaded what would be to come, but still started walking towards Kallen's bed before Zapan took over. Maybe he could stop it if he were in control.

He walked over to the side of Kallen's bed and prayed that she wouldn't wake up now and see him standing next to her bed naked. He should have found something to wear before doing anything, but his little dialogue with Zapan had made him forget about his lack of clothing. Now he felt like a pervert standing next to a sleeping Kallen and was uncomfortably aware of his genitalia. Maybe it would have been better to have let Zapan take over after all... No, his embarrassment was a small price to pay if he could prevent Zapan from killing Kallen. He stopped and looked down to Kallen. Why had Zapan wanted him to go to her now?

His hand reached down to Kallen's face against his will and he thought about what he would do if the hand were to fall on her neck. He would buckle his legs and fall backwards before Zapan could get a grip on her neck, since he couldn't think of another reason for it to want to touch Kallen. He was momentarily relieved when the tip of his right index finger only touched Kallen's forehead. He frowned and wondered why Zapan would want to touch Kallen this way, but then something jolted down his arm and his eyes rolled back in his head and his jaw clenched shut.

Pictures, sounds, smells, words and thoughts were all mixed together in the chaotic kaleidoscope the world had suddenly turned into and he was aware of everything within Kallen's body. Every drop of blood her heart pumped through an incredibly complex system that distributed life and chemical energy to every single part of her body, every slight, but significant change in her body's chemical balance, every flare of energy within her neural system that made up her thoughts, dreams and fears, the constant rhythmic pulsating that was her autonomous nervous system keeping her alive and beyond even that the radiant light that sustained and kept it all going. Was that what Zapan had meant about brightness? The light was almost blindingly bright, but also so full of warmth and diversity it seemed not to exist in only three dimensions, but in a shape and form Lelouch's mind was unable to process.

_Broken_

The concentration of the only seemingly chaotic kaleidoscope changed and the focus of it intensified and followed the flow of energy in Kallen's hand in a level of detail that was almost too much for even Lelouch's mind. He was suddenly aware of every fiber of muscle and string of flesh and the layers of skin and flares of neural messages telling of pain and dislocation in her wrist. A thing he observed as both a dull buzzing and an intense feeling of nausea that somehow still gave him the information about the severity and location of the injury in a way he could not have gained by any other means.

His legs buckled under him and when the physical contact was severed, the chaotic kaleidoscope disappeared and he crashed to the floor. He turned to his side and gagged violently, but was able to stop himself from vomiting. Cold sweat covered his body and his temples pulsated with pain. He swiped his fingers under his nose and wasn't surprised to see the tips of his fingers dyed crimson by his own blood. He felt exhausted and his thoughts were feverish and sluggish. Whatever Zapan had done it had put tremendous pressure on his brain. The amount of information he had suddenly been forced to process had almost overheated his brain. At least that's what he presumed it had been. He thought that he had seen Zapan use its power to somehow scan Kallen more thoroughly than any device human science had been able to conceive could, but as he tried to remember what he had exactly experienced the pain in his head intensified.

His body moved without his own volition as he stumbled up on his shaking feet and pulled the covers off of Kallen and then moved her left hand over to her chest where he could touch it without leaning over her body. He fell to his knees next to her bed while both of his hands were on her left wrist. He could feel that it was warmer than the rest of her body and also that it was considerably swollen. She had broken her wrist when he had pulled her out of the pool earlier. That was painfully clear now, but why was Zapan so interested in it?

There was another jolt travelling down both of his arms and this time he couldn't handle the amount of data and he lost consciousness as the tremendous amount of information was thrust into is mind once again.

He didn't even want to imagine what Zapan would do with Kallen.

**Zapan**

Zapan was surprised that the vessel suddenly left and almost had to retract his mind out of Kalren. Kalren was beautiful and the flaw in her wrist was hurting her. He wanted to fix it, but he didn't know how. He could move and control most of what Kalren was, but the structures within her were so delicate Zapan feared he would break Kalren more if he tried to enhance her like Zapan had done with the vessel. Zapan had to constantly change and rearrange the host to keep the structure functional. Doing such a mistake with Kalren would not be good. He didn't want to break her and tarnish that light.

So, what could Zapan do if he could not fix it? Well, the first thing would be to stop calling out to everything he could become within Kalren's body, so he wouldn't break her by accident. With a considerable degree of regret Zapan took the vessel's hands off of Kalren and the structure disappeared. How could he help Kalren if he couldn't fix her? Zapan didn't want to see Kalren hurt and right now Kalren did not seem to be aware of the flaw in her body, but when her mind comes back it will harm her. Zapan did not want that, but what could he do?

Zapan was not good at thinking about possibilities and what if's and solving a problem like this went over his head, so it took him a rather long time to start assessing the situation. He spent the better part of an hour just moping and thinking how unfair it was, but after 37 minutes he started thinking about what exactly was the reason he couldn't fix the fault in Kalren. He knew what was broken and how it was supposed to be, but wasn't confident he could make it like that in a way that would stay in a form that was self-sustainable. Doing it by trial and error inside the vessel was okay, but Zapan was always there to change the thing that ended up not working, but right now that was not the case and Kalren was going to be even more harmed if Zapan got it wrong.

So, all he lacked was practice in repairing faults in other people. He would have to find another one that was alike Kalren and practice. Yes, that was it! But where could he find something like that? There had to be others alike Kalren nearby, since the vessel thought this as Kalren's room, so were the other rooms someone else's? Zapan ordered the vessel to walk to the doorway leading to other spaces that supposedly were not Kalren's. It opened the door and twisted the head from side to side. No others alike Kalren in what was called a hallway. The vessel walked out the door and into the hallway and turned left. Maybe there were things alike Kalren beyond the other doorways.

Zapan could hear the water inside the walls suddenly be disturbed and moved towards where he was going. He followed the running water past three doors and the maid making the bed in the second quest room would never know how she was spared by a lucky coincidence. Zapan could feel the water flowing into a larger mass of water inside an adjoining room to the one where the doorway led into. After a while he was rather sure it was the same kind of room that had been adjacent to Kalren's room. The vessel's hand closed around the door handle and pressed down, but when he pushed the door didn't open. There seemed to be a metallic object connecting the wall with the doorframe and keeping the door closed. That was stupid, then how would the one on the other side get out? Maybe the metallic object could be removed somehow then... Zapan had seen Kalren twist a metallic object in her door and heard something metallic slide against something metallic. Maybe she had been operating a similar mechanism?

He could not understand metallic structures and there seemed not to be anything to twist on this side of the door, so how could he open this door? The wood used to build the door and doorframe didn't have enough substance for Zapan to change them, but the pipes running inside the walls were filled with water and that water was forming inside the room. Zapan thought he could reach it through the pipe and have it open the door by twisting it. Zapan traced the vessel's hand over the wall next to the door until it was over the water pipe and then pushed the index and middle fingers in to touch the pipe. The water inside was running into the larger mass of water and now there was something inside it, but Zapan didn't pay any attention to it at the minute. He made part of the water move out of the larger mass and start making its way to open the door.

"What the –" Zapan heard a female voice say in the room adjacent to the one he was trying to get into, but didn't pay it that much attention, just kept on moving the water through the doorway. He did pay attention to the sound of footsteps from the other side of the door and pulled his hand out of the wall and the water pipe. "Something's wrong with the pluming again. I knew we shouldn't have trusted those elevens with building th –" The elderly woman cut her sentence short and stared at the vessels face with her jaw becoming slack and her eyes widening. She looked like she could scream and that could wake up Kalren before her flaw was fixed.

"Be quiet." Zapan made the vessel's mouth say and was surprised to see a sudden change in the way the light of this woman change and her face becoming deadpan. Zapan made the vessel step forward and the woman stepped back with him. The water he had moved had almost been able to reach the door and now that he was directly touching it with his foot it was easy to make it move under the woman's feet and toppling her over to the floor. Gathering the water under the woman and toppling her over on the floor to stop her from getting away was easy and making the water snake around her throat did take some of Zapan's concentration, so Zapan decided to use the vessel instead. Zapan had to remember every detail to be able to use what he learned on Kalren.

Zapan used the vessel to drag the woman towards the larger body of water in the adjacent room, while using the water on the floor to stop her from gaining a foothold on any part of their little walk towards the bathroom tub. The scented salts in the tub made Zapan fringe in disgust, but he still slammed the woman back into the water with one arching move of the arm holding her by the neck without hesitation. Who would ruin pure water with that kind of smelly substance? This woman was nothing like Kalren. She bathed in this filth by her own free will. Zapan spread out most of his mind in the water and the woman suddenly found herself unable to move in the water. The first cut Zapan made might have been nearly painless because of the hot water, but with the generous amount of scented salts in the water the pain was there the second he broke the skin and only intensified as Zapan widened the wound to get to the bone underneath.

It did not take long for the bath water to be dyed crimson red, but Kallen's step mother found it impossible to scream, or cry out in any way. Zapan was only concentrating on causing a similar injury on this woman that Kalren had and only cringed at the metallic smell of blood, without realizing what it meant. Zapan was so concentrated on practising with the woman's cells that he all but ignored the visual input of the vessel. The water becoming red was less of a concern to him than his inability to form structures that would support the broken bone as it healed while keeping the system intact.

**Suzaku**

It couldn't have been Lelouch last night, it just couldn't. That is what his logical side told him, but he had seen the signs of decay on his face and the coldness of his body. The bloodstains on his clothes were just as he remembered. He could never forget killing his best friend with that sword, but now that he thought that he might actually be alive after that... He didn't know if he should be glad or furious. Lelouch either was living while his body decayed, or was resurrected somehow. Suzaku cursed knew who to interrogate whether or not they resurrected Lelouch, but that green-haired witch had disappeared without a trace after Lelouch's "death". She, if anyone, would be able to resurrect someone and then give them the power to cut things without touching them and teleporting. She had said that she hadn't given Lelouch the "Code" as she called it, but Suzaku had doubted her sanity from the start, so her resurrecting Lelouch because she felt lonely wasn't anything he would put past her.

Sending the clothes that the intruder had left behind to be tested was the only thing he could do and the only scientist he could trust in this situation, one that was unethical enough to misuse her resources for a favour, was Rakshata. If the results of those tests were what he feared they might be, then she might keep researching it on her own and that would just further complicate things. If the blood on those clothes indeed were Lelouch's, then he would have to do such unpleasant things as exhuming his grave to see if it really was _him _and not some clone with another kind of geass. He had his suspicions about giving such potentially scandalous material to someone like Rakshata, but Lelouch had trusted her and he had been a lot better judge of people than he had ever been. Lelouch actually being alive after making such a big deal out of dying was a good example of his inability to read people.

It shouldn't take long for Rakshata to test the DNA on the clothes he sent her, but he had asked her to run any test she could. If he ever was going to figure this out, then he needed as much information he could get. The episode with the anteater had been strange, but he had no reason to think that something looking like Lelouch appearing and the aggressive anteater were in any way related. It was probably just some bizarre stunt by animal rights activists, or a case of a runaway pet. The guards had only reported to him that the animal in question had been given over to the proper authorities and the guard that had been attacked was receiving medical attention and Suzaku had no reason to doubt their word.

What would he do if the blood on those clothes was Lelouch's? And what about if the results would show that the blood had come from a dead body? Would that prove that Lelouch's body had really been exhumed and this was some complicated plot to derail Nunnally? At which point and with what kind of evidence should he consider the possibility it had been Lelouch from beyond the grave? What was the scenario he should start with? Which one was the most probable? With the information he had right now he just didn't know, so was waiting for the results the right choice before doing anything? Had Lelouch really lived his life with these kinds of thoughts going through his head?

Suddenly, the possibility that Lelouch had gone more than a little crazy towards the end was not that impossible as he had previously thought.

"Zero, the meeting is over. Let's go." Nunnally said as her chair wheeled past him. He had been standing there a couple of steps behind Nunnally. The time he would have to be directly involved in negotiations would come soon and he had been studying law, psychology, tactics and other things that diplomats should know and what people expected Zero to know, but right now Nunnally, being a princess, handled the diplomatic affairs and so far his presence was enough to turn the opinion to their favor. That would change at some point and he would have to be a more active force in the negotiations, but right now Lelouch's passing had given governments of the world a sense of unity and selfish campaigns for power would not be tolerated by the populace. Everyone would look to Zero and the part of the formal royal family he had acknowledged for guidance for a while. It did help that the changes they were making defused the tyrannical reign of Britannia's nobility over the colonies around the world and brought the worst of them to justice, ignoring their standing in the royal family, or their financial assets. He had heard that Cornelia was rather ruthless when going about arresting them.

"Are you sure you're ready to be doing this, Nunnally-sama?" Suzaku asked as he walked next to Nunnally. It had been only days since her brother had been buried and she had cried herself to sleep the night the thing that looked like her brother appeared. Nunnally was a strong soul, he didn't doubt that, but the timing was bothering him. Did she know it was her brother that left that stain on her hand? He glanced at Nunnally as this thought crossed his mind and noticed her raise her left arm like she had a sore shoulder. He had noticed her doing that throughout the day and was worried it could be because he had missed something the intruder had done. "Is there something wrong with your shoulder, Nunnally-sama?"

Nunnally flinched ever so slightly at his question and kept her eyes directly in front of her. He didn't know if she was just concentrating on where she was going, or if she was avoiding meeting his eyes. Why would she do that if it really was a sore shoulder? What possible reason could there be for her to be for her to –

"... Bra strap..." Nunnally said in a voice that the guards trailing them and walking ahead of them couldn't hear.

"Oh..." That indeed would be a reason to avoid meeting his eyes... He couldn't believe he had been so rude. He should stop over-thinking things that could have perfectly natural explanations.

Wait a second, since when did Nunnally wear a bra?

**RIvalz**

"Rivalz, are you seriously okay. You look like you've –"

"Don't say it! I... I'm fine, really. It's just that I spent the whole of last night searching for my notebook and now I'm operating with the power of coffee and energy drinks. I'll be fine after I get some sleep. Don't worry about it. I'm only a little jittery and very tired." Rivalz said, not lying for the most part. It had taken him the rest of the night to calm down and find the notebook. He had decided not to rush into the dormitories screaming after all. All that could come out of that ridicule and a forced visit to an institution. His friend gave him a strange look, but then seemingly decided to drop it. He also knew how hard Rivalz would have to study to pass all his classes, so the story about him staying awake for the whole night because of that was plausible.

But should he really keep this information to himself? He was pretty sure it had not been a nightmare, or a hallucination brought out by mental exhaustion, but could it really had been Lelouch? Should he inform anyone else about this? Maybe Kallen, or Nunnally? Maybe keeping this to himself for now was the best way to go about it. Lelouch's ghost had disappeared and he had not heard that anyone else had seen it. It was probably true that he had been the only one around at that part of the night and it just might be that no one had had the time to see him, but the chance that he might have had a nervous breakdown was haunting him... so to speak.

If he really had had a nervous breakdown and it was causing him to hallucinate, then he should seek counselling and help before it escalated into schizophrenia. At least that's what he thought could happen. His brain was still growing and it was not too late for a traumatic incident to trigger the deterioration of the brain.

Why did it have to boil down to either him being mentally ill, or Lelouch being trapped in this world? Neither one was a very pleasant situation to be in, but he would have to be sure which one it was before he would do anything. If Lelouch really was a ghost, or a ghoul or whatever, then he should probably tell the people involved; Kallen, Nunnally and anyone else Lelouch could try to reach. On the other hand; If he really was going insane, then he should seek the aid of doctors and psychiatrists, before his delusion became any more dominant to his real life.

But how the hell should he go about deciding that?

**Lelouch**

Lelouch was aware that Zapan was in control, but any way he tried to gain back control it did not work. Had he gained control the last times only because Zapan had been tired from using his power? Now that he thought about it that indeed did seem to be the case. Back when he still hadn't regained his memory and Zapan had teleported him around by his instructions he had only been in control because Zapan had been too taxed with the teleporting. At least that's what he thought the reason to be. He knew close to nothing about Zapan or his motivations, nothing Zapan himself did not tell him.

Yet, he still kept trying to gain control of his body. He had a feeling Zapan was doing something irreversible and horrendous. The feelings he could feel from Zapan were too positive and playful for it to be good, taking his recent actions into account. Zapan might have the mind of a child, but it was also painfully obvious that he did not have any moral guidelines, or reservations about using violence. It might also be possible that he simply thought that what he had done to Kallen would kill her. To make matters worse Zapan had supernatural powers and the use of a superhuman body, so not only did he not have any reservations about hurting people; it was incredibly easy for him. The main reason why children picked the wings of flies and not people is because they are too weak to do so. Innocence can be a frightening thing

There was only that much he could do, but he felt how Zapan had started to get tired and the childish graving to have 5 more minutes. He also had a strange feeling that it wasn't because of exertion from using the powers he had, but the drowsiness after a big meal. He had a bad feeling from the first sensory feed he was able to register, which was a metallic scent that he hoped was copper, but knew it wasn't. The stench hit him that much harder because he feared what he would see when he started to see. Zapan was reluctant on giving him control and the scent disappeared for a period of time he was unable to measure. It was near to impossible to keep track of time when you couldn't sense anything, you had nothing to count. Eventually the scent reappeared and he also saw a glimpse of the situation he would be in. He was able to make out his own hand disappearing at the wrist into a red liquid that felt warm. Zapan tried driving him back again, but this time he knew that it lasted only for a second. He pulled his hand out of the red liquid and noticed that his hand wasn't as red as he thought it would be. The red liquid probably was mostly water judging by the way it didn't paint his hand red and only a slight hint of red remained.

He really did not want to look at what he just pulled his hand out of, but he could only dodge the issue for a few seconds. He looked up and saw the head of a woman he didn't know resting on the edge of a large tub. There was blood trickling down from her mouth and her eyes were staring blankly in front of her. She looked to be about in her fifties and something told him that she wasn't one of the help. He couldn't see what was in the tub, but for the amount of blood required to dye the bathwater crimson like that he figured he didn't want to. Why would Zapan do something like this? Was the need that had been itching at the back of his head really just homicidal urges?

Speaking of which; that itch seemed to have disappeared in the time he had been cast out of his body. Was this what he would wake up to find when that itch came back and Zapan would go around satisfying that need by doing... this. He could turn his back on this and run, but he thought that he still hadn't left Kallen's mansion, so this must have been her father's wife, or a relative. He would have to find a way to dispose of the body. He got up on his feet and was surprised that they weren't shaking. He had killed people with his Geass and ordered the death of thousands, but this was so very brutal and personal it should turn his insides upside down, but apart from the mental numbness of Zapan's brutality he felt fine. Was this because of the presumed changes Zapan had made to his body, or was he so desensitized to violence that even something like this didn't faze him?

He took a step towards the woman in the bathtub and at first thought that the water was hiding whatever horrors Zapan had inflicted on this woman, but when he took his second step he could look down and see her left arm. Again, he thought that his insides would cramp up and he would throw up at the sight, but his body didn't react to the sight at all, but his mind was astonished that even an inhuman existence like Zapan was capable of such cruelty.

It would be an understatement to say that Zapan had cut up her left arm. It would be more appropriate to say that he had dismantled it. Zapan had seemingly solely concentrated on her arm, but it just might be that whatever he had done to any other part of the woman's body was left in the shadow of that left arm. He knelt down beside the bathtub because of a morbid curiosity that he was not proud of and just stared at the arm. The bones under her arm were visible in the part of her arm that was not obscured by the bloody water. The flesh around the bone had been peeled to the side and the muscles and flesh had been somehow peeled with them without there being any visible cut marks. The flesh he saw looked smooth and it didn't seem to have any ruptured vessels or holes.

He looked down the arm and saw that Zapan had not settled on just cutting away the flesh on her forearm like he had with her bicep. There was some kind of unnatural dent in part of her forearm he could see and against his better judgment he reached down and pulled the forearm out of the water. This time his stomach did churn and he had to force down a gag. Zapan had not destroyed the arm; it looked like he had tried to reconstruct it. He had somehow parted the flesh and muscles on the forearm on either side of the bones and the only thing in the space between were the tendons that looked like pink violin strings. Zapan had somehow been able to stitch the flesh back together and connect it into the outer side of the bone. The skin looked puffy and was bright red and there were nasty almost black bruises, but there were no cuts visible on the forearm. The side of the bones was exposed on the whole length of her forearm until the wrist.

The trend of violating the woman's flesh, but keeping the pieces on her body stopped past the wrist. There was no skin to hide the several small bones that made out her wrist and it looked like someone had repeatedly stabbed the flesh with a small scalpel, since the wrist could barely keep what was left of her hand on the freak of a forearm. Her hand itself was missing four fingers and they probably were somewhere in the bloody water. The only remaining finger, the thumb, seemed not to have been mutilated like the rest of the arm and it looked unnatural dangling on the minced meat that had been a hand. Her fingers had been cut off from the knuckles and then Zapan had seeming gone on and had carefully removed the flesh from around the bones in the hand. The four white bones were connected in the hand only by a small strand of flesh and he saw one of these strands stretch and then break as he was still holding the arm up. The small bone practically made no sound falling back into the water, but it caused him to finally react and jump back from the bathtub. The arm made a bigger splash while hitting the water, but Lelouch hardly heard it from his speeding heart.

"Oh my god, oh my god, please, oh my god!" He said in a hoarse whisper. It was a kind of a blessing he was too shocked to shout, since he shouldn't be there and he didn't want anyone finding him here. He didn't want to be there himself and he wondered how he could have been able to keep himself from throwing up. Maybe it really was because of Zapan's changes to his body. He stumbled out of the room and looked at himself. He had already dried blood on his arms and his tinted red by the red water that had splashed on him when Zapan had been... playing. He felt sick, but his legs were not wobbly or weak. He felt just fine apart from the intense feelings of disgust and fear making his heart race and his stomach cramp up. He sat down on the bed in the room and stared at his hands. Closing his eyes made him feel sick, so he stared at what he hoped to be dried up blood under his fingernails.

"My god, what am I going to do?" He muttered to himself. His brain was not yet working at full capacity. He would have to figure out what to do eventually, but right now he just couldn't do anything but stare at his hands. He felt restless and afraid and the presence of Zapan inside him had never been stronger.

"Lelouch?" He heard Kallen's voice call out quietly from the hall. He was faintly aware that Kallen seeing him like this was not a good thing and nothing good could come out of it, but he couldn't react in any way. His mind refused to approach the issue. He didn't want to think that his body had been used to do something so cruel and inhumane.

**Karen**

Karen woke up with a start tucked in her bed feeling wet and uncomfortable. She didn't know how she got in, but she guessed she didn't go there herself, since she was wet, uncomfortable and sticky with sweat. It was the heart of summer and Lelouch puts her under the covers fully dressed. She tried pushing herself up, but laid back down because of the intense pain in her left wrist. She knew a broken wrist when she had one and now she did. Great, not only does Lelouch coma back from the dead and mess up her life, but now she had a broken wrist. She rolled out of bed and was able to land on her feet without having to use her hands as support.

She started walking towards the walk-in closet she had in the room to get a change of clothes and use the medkit there, but then she stopped. Where the hell was Lelouch? It wasn't safe for him to go out of her room, but if he had turned back into that another Lelouch he might not care. She rushed to the door and then noticed a footprint on the floor between the door and her bed. It wasn't actually a full footprint, only the toes and a small dot that marked the heel. What made her heart jump that it was red and she had a hard time believing that someone else who was barefooted in the house and stepped into her room with something red on their feet. He looked where the footprints lead to and noticed just now that there was only one sandwich left on the tray she had brought up earlier. Lelouch had come back to eat them while she slept. For some reason she now had a very bad feeling about all of this.

She stepped out in the hall and immediately saw another red footprint outside of her door, this one was a little darker and more of the foot could be seen. It was incredibly lucky someone hadn't noticed them yet, but now she didn't know how in the blue hell she would explain them coherently. She put that matter aside for the moment and started following the footprints down the hall. The further she got the darker the footprints got and when she reached the open door they originated from there were splatter around the footprint.

"Lelouch?" She quietly called out while taking a step to the doorway and pushing the door open. When she saw Lelouch sitting on the edge of the bed staring at his bloodied hands all her fears seemed to come true. He stepped into the room and opened her mouth to ask what happened, but then her eyes were drawn to the side by the bloody footprints leading into the bathroom of her step mother's room. She saw the woman who she should have, but never did call "stepmother" laying in the bathtub and the amount of blood around the bathtub told her she was dead. Lelouch had killed her in the bathtub and judging by the way the blood had splattered on the floor she had fought back. She also saw how her arm was cut open and the bone was showing. It was obvious she was dead, but she could have been alive while that was done to her.

"What have you done?" Karen asked and forced her eyes off of the body of a woman she had admittedly hated for the better part of her life. She did know what Lelouch had done, but the questions she should probably be asking where "how?" and "why?". She didn't see any kind of blade in the bathroom and what possible reason could Lelouch have to kill her? And why had she not screamed bloody murder when she saw a naked man presumably standing over her?

She became aware that she was walking towards the bathroom and the gruesome scene inside it as she was about to cross the threshold. She was wearing sock and now she could feel the blood soaking through to her feet. It was still warm. Why had she not shouted out? There was no way Lelouch could have kept a hand on her mouth or gag her efficiently enough for no one to hear her. What could possibly make her stay quiet? She crossed the threshold and scanned the room in search of something Lelouch could have used as a gag. She didn't like where her thoughts were leading her and when she saw none and more details about the things he had done to woman her father had married was revealed she realized she was crying. The only way for her to stay quiet and no one to disturb Lelouch as he did this was if he used his Geass. An entity or not, there was no way that it could know how to use his Geass that efficiently by accident. It would have know about it and know how to use it.

"Kalren..." She heard Lelouch's voice and felt a hand on her shoulder. She reacted by elbowing him in the face and running past him into the bedroom. She didn't want to get trapped in the bathroom and be his next victim.

"You... Why did you..." Lelouch was still standing in the doorway, holding his jaw with an utter look of surprise on his face. He stood there and Karen struggled to stay standing. Her legs were shaking and felt like rubber. It was hard to see through all the tears. He started walking towards her. "Don't come near me!" Lelouch stopped in his tracks and again cocked his head to the side like a retarded puppy.

"Kalren, I am stronger now, I know more. I can fix you, Kalren, I learned it. No more pain. I'll fix you, Kalren." Lelouch's voice said. It was the most he had talked while like this and it made her feel anxious. Lelouch closed the distance between them faster than she thought possible and grabbed her left hand by the wrist. The pain from his grip clenched her jaw shut and she couldn't scream out. After she gritted her teeth and was just about to strike him again the pain came back ten times as strong. She thought she felt how Lelouch's fingers dug into her wrist and moved things inside it. She pulled her hand out of his grip and punched him in the face. He stumbled back again and now fell down on the floor. He again raised his hand to his face and this time pulled a tooth from his mouth and stared at it. She waited for him to get angry and get up, but instead he just sat up and started crying, loudly and with conviction, like a child.

"UUUUWAAAH! Why? Why did you hurt me, Kalren? I fixed you, I fixed you, didn't I? I learned it!" He shouted and struck his fist on the floor. There was a loud crack and his fist was in the floor from the wrist down. He seemingly had superhuman strength. Karen looked around after she remembered that her stepmother kept a handgun ready in case one of the eleven servants decided to attack her for some reason. He didn't see it out in the open anywhere, so she edged herself to the bed and checked under the pillows while keeping an eye on Lelouch. She found it there like she thought she would and was thinking of what she should do with it when she heard someone gasp in the doorway. She should have realized that Lelouch's crying and the bloody footprints would eventually make someone check out what the hell was going on.

"What in the... Oh my god, is that who I think it is?" A maid Karen had known for ten years stood in the doorway with every bit of colour out of her usually rosy cheeks. She looked between her and Lelouch after she realized he had stopped crying. Lelouch face was twisted by anger and he was moving his legs under him.

"It's your fault..." Lelouch said in between sobs. "It's your fault that Kalren doesn't like me anymore!" He screamed as he bolted up from the floor and towards the maid in the doorway. He was as fast or even faster as Suzaku had ever been and Karen barely had enough time to aim the gun she was holding, but her time in the Black knights had taught her not to doubt herself in a situation where there were lives at stake. Lelouch was not himself and he was about to kill the maid without any acceptable reason. She pulled the trigger and she saw the bullet tear a hole in his neck and he stumbled in the last few steps of his lunge towards the maid. The hand that was probably supposed to go through the maid was now embedded in the wall next to the door and his body fell limp with the hand inside the wall keeping him up.

"Are you okay, Chiyo?" Karen asked the maid as she looked like she was about ready to collapse. She was about ten years older than Karen but had always been kind to her and she had stopped treating her like a servant a long time ago. After she had been publicly declared the hero in the war against the tyrant as the pilot of Guren Mk II she was one of the few people that had not changed the way they treated her. She was about to answer when they both witnessed the person Karen had just shot in the neck pull his arm out of the wall and turn to them. She raised the gun and she did not put it down after she saw that there was intelligence in Lelouch's eyes again. The wound in his neck was barely bleeding and she could practically see it healing. Lelouch turned his eyes to the maid that was looking at him in utter horror. Karen noticed Lelouch's eyes glow a little too late to stop him.

"You saw a complete stranger with spiky hair attacking Kallen, he was wearing a gray jumpsuit." Lelouch said with a raspy voice as his Geass glowed in both of his eyes. She was not affected by it, but the maid was and she answered in the usual "yes, your highness" when he stopped talking. She did not shoot him because seeming he would not stay down if she did, but also because he had his wits about him again.

"I am sorry, Kallen. I am so sorry about this." Lelouch was able to say before the blank look came back into his eyes and his eyes filled with tears again. Karen aimed the gun between Lelouch's eyes and his eyes flashed light green and suddenly Lelouch wasn't there anymore.

She kept on staring at the spot he had been in for a moment and then her hands started to shake so much that she dropped the gun. Tears filled her eyes again and a low whimpering sound that felt like it was tearing her heart out of her chest escaped her. She pressed her hands to her eyes and the sobs jerked her body with painful force. The maid that came back to her senses from the Geass just then took her in her arms and comforted her and dropped to the ground with her as her legs couldn't carry her anymore.

She didn't know the exact reason she was crying, but she didn't stop for another half an hour.

**Suzaku**

Suzaku was standing guard in front of Nunnally's room while she changed her clothes for the next meeting. It had something to do with their cultural laws that she was forced to change clothes, but Suzaku had been too deep in thought to look into it. He shouldn't let a single assailant get under his skin like this, but he couldn't help it. He had looked like Lelouch. What possible reason could anyone to make themselves look like Lelouch to break into the royal palace and do nothing?

The signal for a call in the personal line that was wired to connect straight to his helmet rang and the high-pitched beep right in his ear made him jump and cringe. He didn't know how to turn down the volume, but he was going to be deaf in his right ear if he didn't figure it out anytime soon. He expected it to be Rakshata informing him of the results on the tests he ordered on those clothes, so he pressed the button in the side of the helmet after looking around if anyone was around.

"Yes, what did you find out? Whose blood was it?" He asked impatiently, but when he heard the person on the other end sniff like they were crying he checked the caller on the small LCD display on his wrist. He was surprised to see "KALLEN" on the small screen. He knew she was nearly broken with grief, but she knew better than to disturb him during the day.

"Kallen, what is it? Are you okay?" He asked with a genuinely worried voice. He might be annoyed by her lack of judgment, but he couldn't change his nature whatever he tried. He heard Kallen sob and then fight it down and patiently waited her to say something.

"Suzaku... Please come to me. Please..." Kallen said and another sob escaped her. Was this really just about Lelouch's death? He had thought Kallen was stronger than this.

"I can't do that; I have to stay by Nunnally for the time being. You should know that of all people." Suzaku said and then waited Kallen to answer. She sniffed her nose again but she didn't sob this time.

"Lelouch came to me, he's alive, Suzaku..." Kallen said and Suzaku was speechless. After he disappeared from here he actually went to Kallen? Why had she not called him sooner? Well, maybe she thought that keeping Lelouch's resurrection a secret would be better for the world, like he did.

"He's alive, but there is something inside him, controlling him... A monster... a demon." Kallen sounded like she would not hear Suzaku if he were to say anything, so Suzaku waited for her to continue. What had happened for Kallen to call him while crying?

"He killed my dad's wife... He ripped her apart without remorse or regret and he will kill again." Suzaku had to pause at this piece of information. There was something inside Lelouch controlling him and now it had murdered a noble in this turbulent time?

"I'll be there as soon as I can. Don't tell the police anything until I get there."

* * *

**Okay, that's it. It started to get a little too long so I left a couple of things hanging... on a cliff... that's ON A BOAT**...** Okay, anyways...**

**Please review and tell me if Zapan was a little too brutal, or just what you would excpect from a innocent little psychopath?  
**


	5. Monster

**It's here! Even though my civil duty has put these stories mostly on hold, I have been able to cough up this piece of... something... Well, enjoy and review!**

* * *

**Fifth Chapter**

** Monster**

"Why did she hurt me...? Why did she..." Zapan mumbled as he hugged himself in the darkness. He had become quite adept at forming words and controlling the vessel, but the control he had over it was still incomplete. He was rather sure it was because the vessel had a name. Zapan knew he was faster and more intelligent than people from the information the vessel had given him. He was above them in every way.

"Why did she hurt me?" Zapan voiced out through the vessel. It was the question that was plaguing the mind inside the vessel. He had fixed Kalren, so why did she hurt him in return? Was it because it had hurt her? Sure, it might have hurt her when he set the tissue and bone in place, but she would not feel any more pain after that.

_The woman's eyes widen and seem too large for her face as she sees me. Her hands tremble and she is frozen in place by something that makes her light brighten and its rhythm become erratic. What was it? Fear? Yes, that or something similar. It had shone from Kalren as she found his research. Why had she been afraid?_

The mind outside of the vessel seemed not to be free of those thoughts either. The element only carried his will, it seemed he couldn't control what parts of his will that was. He didn't know for sure, but he had a feeling that the "core" of his mind always had to stay in the vessel. The one outside was a shadow, a copy of that "core". The connection was not constant and it was unstable, but the part of his mind that was within the element was capable of functioning on its own. This last shard of information was intriguing though. The woman seemed to be part of the servants in the mansion.

_She throws what she's holding. Tears fall out those eyes accompanied by a scream. She turns around maddeningly slowly. What she has thrown is still in the air. The element made him faster and the world slower. Why had he not been able to do this before?_

"Catch her, quiet her." Zapan mumbled and the connection was cut again. Could it possibly be because of the activity of the element? It did take Zapan some amount of concentration to move it with his whole mind, so would a part of his mind have even more hardship with it? Why had Kalren been afraid?

_The woman opens her mouth to scream, but the element makes Zapan fast enough to stop her from doing so. The element moves quickly and stops the woman from making a sound. Stopping her movement is only a matter of reaching the element within her cells and stopping them from moving. Her light shines bright and flutters franticly. Zapan feels the warmth of that light and feels a slight echo of her mind almost maddened by fear within it. Why had this not been possible before? Why had Kalren's light seemed similar as she hurt him? Had she thought Zapan would hurt her?_

"I would never do that, I would never hurt Kalren." The vessel mumbled as the mind within the element and Zapan were still connected. It seemed that only the actions of the element affected the connection. If Kalren had feared him and then hurt him to drive him away, did this mean Kalren hated him? Would Kalren's light be cold and hostile? That complex and bright warmth will be gone from him. Zapan had made Kalren afraid and now she hated him!

"She hates me!" Zapan screamed through the vessel without knowing why, but it did make him feel better.

"_She hates me! She hates me! She hates! Hates me! HATES ME! SHE HATES ME! I MADE HER AFRAID AND SHE HURT ME! SHE HURT ME! HATE! HURT! FEAR!"_

The element's mind was simpler and smaller in capacity than that of Zapan's, so the message got scrambledeasily if there was a lot of emotional charge with it. At least that's what it seemed from the splintered images Zapan received from the element. He also registered that the light of the servant had disappeared and the element felt stronger, even though its mind was disoriented. Any normal person with any kind of morals or common sense would worry about what this disoriented supernatural entity would do, but Zapan was too caught up in his own heartbreak.

**Karen**

"_HATES ME! SHE HATES ME! I MADE HER AFRAID AND SHE HURT ME! SHE HURT ME! HATE! HURT! FEAR!" _A strange gurgling voice shouted out from somewhere inside the mansion and Karen thought she felt the ground vibrate and definitely heard something in the walls creaking. She was afraid, very afraid, she probably hadn't been this afraid in her whole life. Seeing what that thing had done and how nonchalantly it had acted about it had chilled her to the bone, but what really got to her was the pained and totally exhausted look Lelouch had had in his eyes. Hadn't he suffered through enough bloodshed already? He had meant to bring peace to the world with his death, but now he had brought something far worse to the world.

"Karen, what was that? Could it be a friend of that guy in a gray jumpsuit? What's going on? Did you call the police? Please tell me you did, Karen. I don't want to die. I'm going on a cruise with my boyfriend next month and I think he'll propose, so I can't die here!" Chiyo franticly sputtered out and Karen acknowledged what she said a couple of seconds behind her usual pace.

"He's going to propose? What are you going to say?" Karen asked before she could stop herself. It really didn't seem like the situation to ask something like that. It was lucky that Chiyo was too deep in shock to be aware of what was appropriate for the situation and calmed down when she could think about something other than what she had just witnessed.

"Well, I think I'm going to say yes. He does make me laugh, but he has a couple of these annoying habits that bug me, but I'm sure I can pound those out of him" Chiyo said and then averted her eyes. Karen left that as that, since she didn't want to think about the context she used the word "pound" in her last sentence. She had to stop Lelouch, or whatever what the thing that was controlling him was, from hurting anyone else. She felt responsible after she had hid it and presumably nursed it from the brink of death into what it was now.

"That's great, Chiyo. Congratulations, but now we should think about how to get out of here first, OK? Can you stay calm for me?" After Chiyo nodded her head Karen stood herself up with the pistol aimed towards the floor in front of her. She felt like running and leaving the probably useless gun behind, but she wanted to look like she knew what she was doing to keep Chiyo calm. She was relieved to see that Chiyo was following close behind her and was keeping herself low. She probably thought that Karen had military training and discipline, but the Black Knights had been a paramilitary guerrilla group for most of the time, so she had minimal training in any military situations outside of a Knightmare. She so wished she was in one right now, but she kept on hurriedly sneaking around corners and staying close to the walls as she thought the trainer had told her to do in closed-quarters combat.

"_HATE! HATE! HATE! SHE HURT ME! SHE HURT ME!" _The strange gurgling voice shouted out behind the next bend andKaren silently thanked god she had remembered to put the safety on the pistol, since if she hadn't then she would have had another hole in her foot right now. She motioned for Chiyo to back up and she readily started running backwards and Karen followed keeping the gun aimed at where Lelouch would appear if she was heading towards them.

Just before Chiyo and she were able to retreat behind the next bend in the hallway the thing that had let out that gurgling shout came around the bend and it most definitely was not Lelouch. It was somewhat shaped like a human, but it was completely made out of what Karen presumed was water with a strong tint of red. It was walking on two legs, but its torso was a single solid mass and the head was only a blob wobbling on the top of it. When it turned the corner it froze in place just like she did. Why was this happening to her? There was no way that a gun would do anything against that. The thing didn't have anything Karen could recognize as eyes, but she was sure it was staring at her as she was staring at it. Then the red tint in its body started to gather towards what would be its torso and its shape started to shiver and gather together into a shapeless mass. She didn't need any other incentive to turn around and run around the bend.

"_SHE HURT ME! HATEHURTHATEHURTHATE! HAAATE!" _The gurgling voice was deafening as it was this close and Karen hear the thing's weight slam into the wall to her side. She hoped that it had lunged at her and was slower than that normally, since if it could move that fast –

She was thrown off her feet as the thing slammed itself on her back with just as much force it had slammed on the wall, but it was lucky that it was made out of water, since if it had been something with a solid body she would have broken her spine in the impact. Now she was flying forward in the air with all the air in her lungs escaping out in one breath and she could feel how the thing was moving on her back and shaping itself to surround her. The second it took for her body to fly forward in the air seemed like minutes, since she felt how the water thing spread out around her body to completely incapacitate her. The shock of landing on the floor was of course lessened by its body surrounding hers, but it didn't change the fact that she was probably going to die right here, as gruesomely as her stepmother had been. The thing's mass spread over her face and because the air had been knocked out of her lungs she breathed a lung full of its watery body.

_She hurt me. She hurt me. Why did Kalren hurt me? Does she hate me? Is her light cold, dim and hostile? Is Kalren Kalren anymore if her light has changed? WHY DID SHE HURT ME! SHE HATES ME! DID I HURT HER! WHY DID I HURT HER? ! I HURT HER! I HURT KALREN!_

The burst of thoughts and emotions was so surprising and intense she didn't even have the time to wonder how she was still conscious after breathing in water. Was that the thing inside Lelouch? It sounded like a child wallowing in self-pity. With its strong emotions mixed in with the words she couldn't help but feel sorry for it. Had it come into existence as Lelouch was resurrected, or was its mind this childish just because it was like an animal? There had been a frightening kind of innocence in its words after it had done what it did to her stepmother now that she thought about it. It had said something that it had done it for her, to fix her. Could it really have no sense for sympathy?

**Of course it doesn't. Our morals and the codes we abide by are all learnt during the course of our lives, when we have no ability for greater cruelty than picking wings off of flies. All children are egoistic and cruel, it is fortunate they are also weak.**

Lelouch, is that you? How could he be inside this thing? They were sharing a body, so was this somehow also part Lelouch? What if they were the same person to start with, but Lelouch just had to do these things to survive, like a vampire. Would he really be okay with surviving in the expence of others? True, he had used and sacrificed people for his goals, but he had always been fighting for a grander goal than his own survival.

_I will not... I will not hurt Kalren. Never again! I WILL NOT HURT KALREN!_

"_WILL NOT HURT KALREN! WILL NOT!" _The water being screamed in its gurgling voice and because Karen was inside it the volume made it feel like there were ice picks going into her ears and she could feel how her consciousness was trying to leave her. It seemed like the water thing had been feeding her oxygen because the thing that was inside Lelouch had some kind of morbid fascination with her. The being in question started to move its mass off of her slowly, not leaving even a drop of water on the parts of her legs that were uncovered from it.

**Kallen, you have to listen to me. The hunger it feels is for human lives and cruelty. It speaks of a light inside people, how they are dull, bright, warm, cold or anything it can think of. I don't think it is entirely its own delusion, but that this light is something that feeds it, drives it to evolve.**

What was Lelouch suddenly saying about lights and hunger? Karen couldn't understand a word he was saying, but still tried to memorize what she presumed to be Lelouch told her because of the tone of his "voice". The thing made out of water that somehow connected her to Lelouch's and the thing's mind was moving up from her shoulders and would be over her head and on its way in a few seconds.

**Its name is Zapan! You have to st –**

The feeling of the water gushing out of her lungs and up her throat was beyond unpleasant and the water retreating from sustaining her life cut the connection short, or the sickening feeling was just too much for her to keep concentrating on what Lelouch was trying to tell her. Karen gasped for breath and her head was buzzing and her eyes were itchy beyond belief. She tried to blink, but she found she couldn't do so because there was no water on her eyes to lubricate them enough. The watery thing had stolen at least some of her water for her to feel this dehydrated.

"_Dim... frantic... dull... Not Kalren..." _The gurgling voice of the monster that had spared her mumbled aloud as it slithered away from her, not even bothering to take up its humanoid form again. It was just a mass of water going down the hallway now and that was why Karen could see what it was heading towards over its form. She could only see the servant's uniform, but it didn't take much for her to know who it was.

"Chiyo..." Her voice was only a raspy whisper and it hurt to even do that. That water monster had spared her, but now she was severely dehydrated and couldn't tell Chiyo run away. "Run... Run, you stupid..."

"_Hunger... hunger... it hurts... aches..." _The water thing mumbled aloud again and it picked up speed on the floor by rising up on countless legs on the floor. Chiyo was holding the gun Karen had probably dropped by her feet unsteadily and she could see how useless she thought shooting the thing would be from the desperate look on her face.

"Stop... Please... She's going to get married..." Karen pleaded as she found that her arms or legs had no strength in them and there was the darkness of unconsciousness gathering at the edge of her vision. The thing had mumbled about a hunger and so had Lelouch. Why had Lelouch seen it so important to tell her that? To explain himself? And why had he been so desperate on telling the thing's name? And such a weird name at that...

"Stop... Please don't take her light, Zapan..." She mumbled herself as consciousness faded away from her. She was not aware if she had put the pieces together herself, or had the link between her and Lelouch's minds helped her halfway, but the last thing she saw was the water monster stopping in its tracks and gathering back into its nearly humanoid form, staring at her in surprise.

Then, oblivion.

**Suzaku**

Suzaku had alerted a personal strike force under his, or rather Zero's, direct supervision to follow behind him to Stadtfield mansion. Having the general public know about whatever had happened there before he knew what there was to know would be very inconvenient for their cause. Had it really been Lelouch, or had Kallen been in shock, or delirious from grief, he didn't know yet. Kallen had taken Lelouch's death especially hard and Suzaku didn't know which one he'd prefer; Kallen having a nervous breakdown, or that Lelouch had really been resurrected with _something _inside him that seemed to have homicidal tendencies.

The strike force would be 5 to 10 minutes behind him and that time would have to be enough for him to dispose of any evidence placing Lelouch in the scene of the crime. He had himself taken his own Knightmare to beat them there. It had of course been modified to look different from the original Lancelot, but it handled just the same, so he could deal with whatever Lelouch had possibly turned into. He just had to wonder why he thought he had turned into a monster that he'd need a Knightmare to fight. It might have been the fear in Kallen's voice, or just the hate in the back of his mind because of the chance that his resurrection could have been in Lelouch's plans all along.

When the Stadtfield manor started to come into range of his sensors he started to scan the whole mansion for signs of life and anything uncommon; energy signatures, radiation, hot spots, anything. When he started the reverse thrusters for his descent the first reading from his scans were starting to come in. He didn't want to believe what the scans were telling him. The scan that siphoned out life signs from all of the data coming in was saying that it only detected three life signs within the whole mansion. A mansion of that size at least needed half a dozen servants, but with the Stadtfield's high rank in nobility they should at least have double the bare minimum, so how could there only be three of them?

He started manoeuvring the knightmare towards the mansion and kept dropping his speed, so that he could go over the data the later scans were giving him. The mansion didn't have any foreign heat sources in it, nor were there any great electrical fields, so there would probably be no knightmares waiting for him. He was not an expert, but some of the scans were giving him results that only confused him. There was a scan that detected movement within buildings using ultrasound or something and it was saying there were at least six people moving within the mansion, but how could that be when there were only three life signs and all of them were stationary?

He adjusted the sensors to detect life signs smaller than a dog in hopes that the movement in the mansion would be animals and not... something else. He heard the computers click and the sensors hum quietly as he landed the knightmare next to the pool in the back of the mansion. When the sensors stopped humming and the computers had processed the data it only confused him more. The reading should be definite and without any room for debate, but what the computer was telling him that there was 12 to 20 moving objects within the mansion without a power source. He sincerely hoped it was only because they were special ops guys wearing some kind of suit or armour to protect them from life sign scans.

That was something he could understand and handle, but if it was anything "demonic" or "supernatural" he wasn't so sure. So, should he shoot the moving objects with the Knightmares armaments, or disembark and engage them himself? If they really were pros in protective suits the fact that he hadn't been attacked yet meant that they didn't have the firepower to dent the Knightmare and were waiting for him to come out.

And if they were anything else it meant they were afraid of the big metal thing or just hadn't noticed him yet. If they were afraid of the Knightmare then he should stay in it and attack, but if they just hadn't noticed him and were concentrated on snuffing out those three remaining life signatures. Whatever it was he should act now and think later. There were lives at stake here, one being the one of his friend (kinda) Kallen. He fired up the weapon systems he happened to have on the Knightmare at the time and chose the one most unlikely to actually kill the perpetrators. The weapons on his Knightmare were made to fight other Knightmares, but there was a high-energy magnetic pulse accelerator that was used to shut down electrical systems in Knightmares shielded from EMP and other such things. It was powerful enough to tear a person in half since the magnetic pulse was transmitted via an aluminium pellet...

Damn, when had he become such a gun geek... Without letting his sudden realization phase him too much he aimed near the closest registered sign of movement and fired. The weapon was more power he had thought since the magnetic pulse was just that, a high-energy magnetic pulse and there was countless copper and steel constructs in the wall he was shooting at. The sight of the structures in the wall bending and the water pipes rupturing towards the place he had shot. He only saw something crimson explode and the walls be covered with blood. He just had enough time to be shocked of what he had done when the screaming started.

"_IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAARGGH! MY MIND! OUR MIND! YOU! WHO! WHO ARE YOU!" _The volume of the voice was impossibly loud for it to be natural and Suzaku's head was about to split and his vision was getting blurry, even though the Knightmare should have countermeasures against a sonic attack. _"GONE! GOOONEEE! IT HURTS! YOU... You did this."_

After the voice said this it fell silent and Suzaku's headache started subsiding. His eyes cleared up and he ran a system check on the Knightmare and saw no damage in its systems. Then why did a sonic attack get through to him? He ran the scans again and the three life signs were still there, but the mysterious moving cloaked assailants were gone. So, was that to cover their escape? Then why was it a voice with such strange words?

As to not give him any time to gather his bearings the proximity alarm went off and the visual sensors automatically turned to it. What he saw shouldn't have surprised him after all he had seen and after Kallen's phone call, but seeing Lelouch just standing beyond the hole in the wall his "un-lethal" weapon had made still made him stop and stare.

"I do not see your light, Suzaku. That is your name, yes?" Lelouch said in a voice that didn't quite sound like him. There was a slight lisp that was too unlike Lelouch for it to be him. Was this the "demon" Kallen had mentioned? He reacted to Lelouch raising his arm by pointing the main weapon of the Knightmare at him. He knew it was over-reacting to an unarmed person, but Lelouch would never show himself without an ace up his sleeve. _"You hurt me."_

The proximity alarm started to beep furiously and he turned the Knightmare around to deflect the attack he expected with the shield it was equipped with. Seeing the water in the swimming pool rush at him like a miniature tsunami surprised him and he could only deflect the initial shock of the water, so the Knightmare didn't tip over on the mansion and possibly endanger those three life signs. His mind could not fathom how the water could rise up from the pool without any kind of explosion. Was this some kind of trick? Had he somehow hacked into the Knightmare and was showing this to him to cover his own escape? No, that couldn't be it; he could feel the weight of the water pushing the Knightmare down. All he could see now was the swirling mass of water around the Knightmare. How was this possible, it was like the water was alive?

"_Are you here to hurt Kalren? You shouldn't have hurt me, Suzaku." _The voice sounded faint and eerie, but Suzaku had no trouble in making out the words. He saw a pair of green orbs of light in the swirling water and then the Knightmare was rocked by a hit equivalent of a shock grenade and the screen went blank. Was Lelouch attacking him with a weapon or was it the water? _"Kalren... I will not let you hurt Kalren!" _The hydraulics in the Knightmares right leg failed and the mecha started tilting sideways.

_BHOOM!_

He had fired the main cannon of the Knightmare reflexively and he felt a moments tread as he wasn't sure where it was pointing at. The tilting motion of the KNightmare stopping and then reversing reassured he had shot the cannon into the ground and he was now suffering the shrapnel. Had he hit the pool, or the ground below? Shrapnel from the pool could hurt the ones still alive inside.

"_IIIIIIIIIIIRRRGH! WHAT? WHAT IS THIS! IT HURTS! IT..." _There was a pause and Suzaku thought he felt how the strange pressure that had kept the Knightmare from moving was lifted and it crashed to the ground. The damaged cameras and other receptors on the Knightmare finally redirected their functions to their back-ups and SUzaku was finally able to see outside.

"Suzaku..." Lelouch was standing on the Knightmare's chest plate and was talking directly to the back-up camera. He seemed to be holding his side and something about it bothered him, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. "It hurt Kallen. She is severely dehydrated at least and there is also a maid in the mansion that... needs help..."

His facial expression became pained and he staggered on his feet. Suzaku tried to move the Knightmare to catch him, but found that its systems were rebooting. Several hydraulic systems had malfunctioned; Great. Lelouch clutched his side again and now he realized what had bothered him about it when the blood coming from the wound intensified. There was a piece of shrapnel in his side and he was pressing it deeper. Why would Lelouch do something like that?

"It's... He's stronger than I thought. He'll be in control again. Please save Kallen. Tell her it's not her fault, any of it. This is my cross to –" His facial expression was extremely pained and Suzaku heard him scream low from his throat. His figure started to seem luminescent and wavered like a mirage. His eyes had become pools of green light. "Stop me."

And with that he disappeared and a sharp rock, drenched in blood made a barely distinguishable "clang!" when hitting the screens around him started to beep and flickered to life, but he was still frozen in place by what he had seen. Had Lelouch just teleported after controlling thousands of litres of water like it was nothing? What had he done to himself?

_It's... He's stronger than I thought. _He had really been so full of himself that he had meddled in something this dangerous and now he had the audacity to ask him to stop him after it blew in his face? For _his _own fucking plan he would be forced to do as he asked, but it was not like he should like it! Fuck you, Lelouch, fuck you! Father like son indeed.

_It hurt Kallen._

"Kallen!" Suzaku shouted and shot to action. He pressed the button to open the Knightmare after he rolled it over so he could actually get out. He was almost out of the thing when he remembered the first aid kit in the cockpit. It was a rather well stocked and there should be something like a drip of saline fluid to hydrate her in there. He was pretty sure he knew how to operate it, but there really was no time to hesitate.

As he was running into the mansion he was ashamed to notice that he was considering if he should look for the evidence placing Lelouch there before looking for Kallen. It might have just been that Lelouch had hurt Kallen to stop him from doing that (for whatever reason) and he _really _hated the idea of doing anything he wanted right then and there.

**C.C**

She was sleeping in a barn, an old hay barn on the edge of some little farm in the middle of nowhere. It was summer in the country which name she wasn't even sure of so she could sleep outside with the big yellow plushie as her pillow just fine. The Code in her made it so she was sore or stiff only for a couple of minutes as long as she stretched properly. It kept her body exactly in the condition it had been when she received the cursed thing, so she didn't get fat and it was also near impossible to starve to death. She had tried and all it had really happened to her was that she was incredibly sleepy and the mark on her forehead glowed constantly. It was probably the Code supplying her brain with nutrition or something.

Damn, did the dry hay smell good! Spending years in stuffy old battleships and such really wasn't for her. The idea Mao had about a house in the middle of nowhere didn't sound bad, but he was such an utter and total basket case. She had heard talk of a chainsaw and a suitcase... or was it several suitcases? She kept on trying to remember the crazy ranting of the little psycho when the world suddenly exploded and was replaced by a bright green light.

She opened her eyes and what she saw was somehow slowed, turned upside down, sideways and then condensed into a bright aqua green orb. It hurt her eyes and brain to look directly into it since it should not be possible and yet it was there and she also knew it wasn't. The paradox hurt her brain, but that was the truth. There was movement inside the orb and at first she thought there was a school of fish swimming in circles inside the light, but then it focused into a figure of a man. The figure was very familiar to her and he really was the only one she knew who would make such a flashy entrance.

"Lelouch..." Wait, he really, _really _should have been dead. She had suggested giving him the Code and he had refused it on the chance that it could ruin his master plan on world peace. She remembered him refusing her offer with a bone crushing duty on his shoulders and only his sister and loved ones in mind. He had been the definition of a martyr when he died and the respect she had for his actions had made her reconsidering ending his own life, but what about now? It was not like this would make her suicidal again, but the thought that Lelouch had lied to her really pissed her off. Why wouldn't he trust her with this information?

The green light disappeared as quickly and as quietly as it had appeared and CC could only see the bright neon green afterimage on her retinas and only heard Lelouch's body crash onto the ground. He grunted and breathed heavily like he was in pain and CC started crawling towards to where she heard his voice. Of course the shock of his appearance and her practical blindness made her forget that the hay stacks she was sleeping on where on the upper floor of the barn and she ended up crashing next to Lelouch headfirst. When she was able to focus her eyes from the pain she saw Lelouch staggering up on shaky feet and a pained expression.

"Is it tired? Did it tire itself with that, or is it just toying with me? I need to work fast; I need to stay in control... stay in control..." He kept on mumbling that phrase as he staggered forward with shaky feet. She had seen a glimpse of his face before he turned his back to her and the terror shining from his eyes shocked her. What the hell could have happened to make Lelouch that terrified, it must have something to do with his new ability to teleport. And what was he talking about staying in control? Mental manipulation, perhaps?

"_Get out of my barn, you lo –" _The man's sentence was cut short as he saw the two of them and the gun he was holding was pointed squarely at Lelouch. He obviously recognized the demonic tyrant of the world that had died recently and didn't hesitate on pulling the trigger. CC was too late to throw herself between them as she had done many times before and seeing Lelouch fall with his face turned into a bloodied mess from the shotgun pellets that burrowed into his face made her chest clench in cold terror. Had he really come back to her for her to watch him die in front of her a second time?

Lelouch's fall was stopped at an unnatural angle with his back only inches from the ground and CC could see from his point of view how the flesh on his face was melding back together and soaking in the flowing blood back into the living tissue. His body shot back up into a standing position with a sudden movement that could not be accomplished with the muscles in the human body alone. His eyes were staring blankly ahead, but CC could see a dangerous green glow in them and judging from the rush the farmer was loading his gun and the way he was fumbling while doing it so did he.

Lelouch's eyes flashed bright green and a low guttural growl escaped him and the farmer's skin ruptured and a mist of blood covered him from sight. What had Lelouch done to the man? Had he really done what she thought he had done? Had he really somehow boiled the man's blood fast enough for it to explode through his skin? Lelouch crashed on his knees and then lowered himself down on his hands and knees. His shoulders were moving violently and she could hear unrestrained sobs. What the hell had happened to break him like this. CC crawled to him and touched his shoulder. He jerked in surprise and looked at her like she was a total stranger and with fear in his eyes.

"It's okay, Lelouch. I'm here now..." The anger she had been feeling as he appeared had disappeared. It was obvious he had not meant for his plan to escalate into something like this. He was more broken by fear and sadness than she had ever seen him. Lelouch tackled her and then they lied there with Lelouch quietly crying about some terrible thing she didn't know about, but definitely he thought he was responsible of and CC just holding him, glad to have her knight back. They stayed like that for a while and CC almost missed what he mumbled as he stopped crying.

"I became a monster for the sake of my sister, but now I am a monster for nothing..." He mumbled more to himself than anyone else before he fell asleep on her.

Great.

* * *

**Yes, I am ending it there. It's not like our old Lelouch could take being a real sadistic monster from god knows where without breaking down even a little bit. He is human after all, unlike Zapan.**


	6. Ghosts

**Yes, this is the sixth edition of my story "What Resides Within". It is what I wrote after fifinishing my civil duty, so... well, I dunno. It's a chapter as any other, continuing the story and such.**

**So, enjoy and review, please.  
**

* * *

**Sixth chapter**

**Ghosts  
**

"Why?" Lelouch asked out loud, this time feeling his lips move and air coming out of his mouth as he spoke into the echoless space. This was obviously another attempt of this "Zapan" to pull him to its level. This time it was different though, very different. The change was so drastic that he could only shudder at the possibilities of this thing's growth rate. "Why am I here again? Why drag me down here now?"

"_I have questions." _His reflection in the water answered and stepped out from under him. He jumped and stumbled back. His reflection didn't follow him and the assumption that the deadpan water he was standing on represented Zapan was verified. His reflection was just that, a reflection of him, but with one distinctive difference. Zapan had those creepy glowing green eyes. Lelouch had an idea on what Zapan was going to ask, even though he still couldn't figure out why it hadn't figured it out yet. It had shown itself to be at least an analytical genius.

"_Why did Kalren shoot me? Why did Suzaku hurt/dismember/break/kill me?" _There was a strange feeling of too much information packed into one word, when Zapan couldn't find a word to describe what Suzaku had done, whatever it had been, or maybe it was his mind that couldn't comprehend the word it was using. Another example of how surreal this situation was. He was talking to his own reflection, which was actually the psychological presentation of a monster inside him that had supernatural powers and that had brought him back from the grave.

"Zapan, try and understand this simple notion; People will hate you if you kill indiscriminately." He was aware that this hinted towards the fact that they wouldn't hate it if it killed _discriminately, _but he just had a feeling that lying to this thing was a mistake, even if he had a strange certainty that he was able to do so now. "You showed Kallen that you see nothing wrong with mutilating someone alive and leaving them to bleed out when you're bored. She fears the monster that you are and no amount of good intentions will change that. They hurt you because you are an unnatural monster that sees human life as food!"

"_You sound angry. Why are you mad at me? I brought you back from the dead." _Wait a second; didn't this thing even realize why _he _was angry? How fucking blind can you be! Was it really true it didn't have access to his memories? How in the flying fuck did it learn to communicate so fast then? It might be an analytical genius from what he had observed, but there had been no source material for it to learn the words and characters of Japanese culture. The knowledge had to have come from his mind, there was no other explanation for it.

"Are you kidding me? I _did not _ask to be resurrected! I planned my own death and from what I've seen; people would have been better off if I had stayed dead! Only if you hadn't interfered, then –"

"_It was not of my volition I brought you back. I never thought that you even existed, remember, vessel?" _Zapan said and the frightening mental growth was apparent as it was able to shut him up with a single sentence. Had it just been hours from the time it could barely glue words together? Now it was actually mature enough to be _sarcastic? _ It was not a nameless force in the darkness anymore, it had clearly distanced itself from him and seemed to be careful not to show its cards to him.

"Then who did? What exactly are you? Do you even know that much about yourself? I want answers, you fucking monster!" He was losing his temper, which was in his experience a bad thing. He didn't think straight when he was angry and his mind was the only thing he could play against this thing right now. He should keep his wits about him and fish out information from this thing before it matured enough to outsmart him. He knew this and was telling himself to stop, but something about diving into your mind loosened your inhibitions. "Are you destroying _everything I built _without knowing who, or what, you are?"

Finally, he was able to stop himself and he started pacing the surface of the water that was somehow able to support his weight. Thinking about the impossibility of it would not benefit him in any way, so he tried to ignore it. He needed to calm down though, so he averted his gaze to his surroundings. What he was standing on was a deadpan body of water stretching out as far as he could see, but he could see eerie shadows moving under the surface. He looked up and was genuinely surprised at what he saw there. It was not reflected on the water below him, so it felt detached from reality, well this wasn't real to begin with, so...

He saw the field in the estate he used play as a child. The one with the pond they all used to swim and play in until the duties of royalty made those days fewer and fewer apart. The pond had frogs and fish and all kinds of things in it, but it was large enough to swim in and scaring Euphemia with those said frogs was always amusing. Even though it wasn't _him _who did it, but he only started defending her after laughing quite a bit. That was if Cornelia wasn't there. Man, talk about a tomboy...

"_Euphemia? Cornelia? Are they names? They sound familiar." _Zapan's voice snapped him out of his memories. The images of Euphemia and Cornelia were floating in and around the pasture.

"What is this? Why is there a picture of the field we used to play in the... sky!" Lelouch shouted and turned his eyes back to his reflection standing a couple of steps away from him and under him. The reflection bent down and looked down, which was up for him, since it was a reflection.

"_So, that's what you see... I don't know, but everything on your side is __**you **__and everything on my side is __**me.**__" _The reflection rubbed its chin like it was pondering the words and then just shrugged very nonchalantly. _"I guess. How the hell would I know? As you have pointed out; I didn't even exist a week ago!"_

"Answer my question! Why _did _you resurrect me?" Lelouch asked as he realized it had completely ignored the question a while ago. His own reflection turned to him and tried to stare him down for a solid minute.

"_Because that was the term of the contract, I guess. She wanted you to come back to life because she didn't like the idea of you being dead." _His reflection started to pace under him and the surface of the water rippled with its footsteps and every ripple brought to light the shadows moving under the surface as they passed under them. He couldn't make out a definitive shape, but it was something much more than a swirling mass of water now. Or maybe it was just that he _imagined _it would have to be something more for it to be so intelligent. It was using his body, so why would it have any definite form in this dreamscape?

"Wait a minute; a contract, she? What are you talking about? You made a deal with someone to bring me back?" Lelouch asked and Zapan gave him a look that said "God, how can you be so stupid?"

"_Hmm? Who's there?" _The reflection on the water disappeared with the ripple of its last step and the whole dreamscape he was in fell silent and motionless. The eerie movement under the water intensified and it started disturbing the water as something moved in the dark depths, clearly agitated. The green glow he had started to connect with Zapan flashed here and there and brought to light forms he couldn't put a name for. Zapan indeed had a definite form now, several definite forms. Swirling in the depths of its design and forming one gigantic swarm of personas that brought it its intelligence.

_Hope this works, hope this works, I really hope this works._

Wait, who was that? How did he hear it? It felt like when Zapan talked to him in the real world, he just _knew _the words. He also got a feeling it was C.C muttering them while she pressed her forehead on his and held his head with both hands. Wow, that was detailed... Okay, more than a feeling then. More like a memory happening just then. He looked up and saw the sign of the Geass glowing in the place of the estate of his childhood. It could have been because of what C.C was doing, but it might also be because of the fact Lelouch was thinking about it.

Then something broke the water's surface where the reflection had been a second ago. It broke through the invisible wall that kept the water undisturbed and appendages it used to try and climb out with started out looking like hands, but then it just started melting. The green eyes shone brightly and were full of hate, when the being struggled to reach him and was stopped and ripped apart by the strange force keeping Zapan at bay. Every time it set its hand on the water's surface to push itself up, it started to meld back into it, but the thing was still able to pull itself out of the water and drag itself to him. He was either frozen in place from the same thing trying to trap Zapan, or from sheer disgust and fear.

"_It's dark and they scream... I don't want to go there." _The thing that probably was at least a part of Zapan muttered in a gurgling and barely distinguishable voice. The entity was grabbing his leg with one hand that looked like it was only made out of melting flesh and bones. Its grip tightened painfully and it dragged itself closer to him while the other arm ripped out of its socket and its legs sunk into the raging depths. It was like a scene out of a bad horror movie and the fictional place and the fact that his mind was probably adding more and more gruesome details into this situation made it that more terrifying. The thing stretched out its neck and bit his leg and the pain finally made him move. He stomped the thing's head with his other foot and the whole thing sunk through the water's surface along with any trace of its existence.

_Wake up, Lelouch. Follow my voice. It's trapped, but you have to come back to me._

Follow her voice? Her voice was coming up from the ceiling/sky of this little dream Zapan had supposedly constructed. Was it really so that the dark, raging depths were Zapan's mind and the vibrant light of the sky was his mind? This thing was either so inhuman he just couldn't picture its mind, or he should feel sorry for such a twisted mind. The depths he saw was what he imagined what a sociopath's mind would look like. The dark blurring away reality and giving way to unhealthy delusions, like the "light" Zapan had talked about. Maybe it was just bat shit crazy, not evil. Well, Zapan was a monster either way. But was it really alright to trap him in the far recesses of his mind just because of that? He had killed countless people himself either directly or indirectly and Zapan didn't know any better. For such a young mind to commit murder... It was bound to twist a person, just look at Suzaku.

_LELOUCH!_

Oh, right! Consciousness and such; he should get out of here... somehow. The glowing Geass symbol was in the ceiling, so should he just jump? Worth a shot, since this space was only a dream anyways.

**C.C**

Lelouch woke up with a start and gave her a rather solid knock on the head while his body jerked into awareness. She was knocked back and her consciousness was swimming, no matter how much her Code tried to bring her back into the world of the living. She only woke up as Lelouch started shaking her by the shoulders. She opened her eyes and while her were still blurry she thought she saw a green glow in his eyes, but when she blinked her eyes a couple of times she realized it was only the blow to the head that caused afterimages of neon green figures dance on her retinas.

"C.C! Oh, thank god; you're alive." Lelouch seemed to have genuinely been worried, which meant he was in more of a fragile state of mind than she had hoped, or that he couldn't remember that she had the Code. "I thought it had... Is it gone now? What did you do exactly?" He did sound lucid, but the fear was still in his voice. What the hell had happened to Lelouch?

"Well, whatever it was I was able to trap it within a section of your mind. I might not have a Geass, but the Code gives me dominion over the human psyche... It's kind of like I can move things in your mind, but not change it, I guess." It wouldn't help either one of them in any way if she were to start lecturing about what exactly was Geass and the Code, so she used a rather crude metaphor to explain. "It is locked within your psyche, but the power I felt from it... I'm not sure if it will last."

She was ready to admit that she was emotional after seeing Lelouch alive after thinking he was dead, but she still enjoyed seeing how her words sunk in. First there was shock and then it gradually but quickly turned into fear and after a few seconds his lip straightened out and the familiar look of determination came over his face. He seemed to be ready to fight this thing. Whatever had happened to make him this unstable hadn't broken him completely. After seeing the look of determination return to his face she became aware of the thing she _should _have noticed first.

"How long have you been naked, Lelouch?" He had just appeared out of thin air and was alive, so him being naked was something she could live with, especially since Lelouch seemed to have toned up from the scrawny noble he had been, but the fact that she had somehow been unable notice the fact until she trapped the entity inside him suggested that the thing had been able to alter her perception without her being aware of it.

"What?" Lelouch looked down to his naked body and the look that came over his face was a mix between surprise and embarrassment. The thoughts "Oh my god, I'm naked!" and "How long have I been naked and why haven't people noticed?" were there. At least his mind worked as fast as before.

"We need to find you some clothes, Lelouch" C.C said and decided that talking about Lelouch's current predicament would have to come later. She had made sure that the mind inside the body indeed was Lelouch's, but the way his body radiated heat like he had a fewer and the strange formation of muscles in parts of his body made her suspect that Lelouch's body was not human anymore. It was undoubtedly because of the inhuman presence within his mind, but the fact it could affect the composition of the human body to that extent and also trick her eyes was something that made her feel uneasy.

"Yes, we seem to be in a barn. How far is it to the nearest settlement?" He rose to his feet and looked at the body on the ground. The flash of light had not exploded the man into pieces as C.C had originally thought. It had only blasted his face and the skin of his chest into a mist of blood and bits of flesh. Unfortunately the man had not died and was now coughing out his own blood as it was slowly drowning him. "Did you know this man, C.C? Could someone have heard the gunshot?"

Right to the point, as expected of the Lelouch she knew. "I don't know. There's a field between this barn and the house he supposedly lived, if he's not hired help, or something like that. It is possible someone heard it."

Lelouch ran over to the man, but when he got close he averted his eyes and took a step back. C.C followed him and had to take a step back herself from the stench coming from the man. If she had ever wondered what boiled blood smelled like she had an answer to that question. Even though the copper-like stench was pungent, it couldn't be just boiled blood that would smell this horrible. C.C took a step to the side and forced herself to examine the body analytically. The flesh was not only exposed and bleeding profoundly, there were parts of the exposed flesh were the skin was covered in blood, but intact. There were also spots on the exposed flesh that had not only been ripped into a mesh of tissue, but there was puss seeping out and fungi growing out of these areas at an unnatural rate.

"I'm sorry you were dragged into this." C.C snapped out of the gruesome sight that had sucked her in just in time to avert her eyes from the sight of the man's head blowing into even more of a mess as Lelouch shot him in the head with the shotgun he had been shot with less than an hour ago. The body fell silent and motionless, but Lelouch jumped back and threw the gun out of his hands for some reason. If he had consciously aimed the gun and pulled the trigger, then the recoil or the blast couldn't be that much of a shock.

"Did you see that? What the hell was that light?" Lelouch shouted frantically and his eyes jumped between the gun and the lifeless body. C.C was not sure what it had been he had seen, but she was sure it was either because of the supernatural state his body was in, or an attempt to break free by the thing inside him. If it was the latter so soon after she had made the seal they were in trouble.

"Calm down, Lelouch. I didn't see a light. What did you see?" C.C was somehow sure she didn't really want to know, but she had to know if the thing inside Lelouch was already breaking out.

"It was... His light. His light was bursting out of him on the moment of death. Thousands of colours and noises as his memories unravelled and became..." The smile that spread on Lelouch's face then was incredibly creepy, as he had just blown the head off an innocent man. Lelouch might not be quite as she remembered him to be after all. Fortunately Lelouch seemed to become aware of the disturbing smile and composed himself quickly.

"We should go get me some clothes from his house. He has a son about my size. They are in town right now, but should be back in an hour or so. We should move fast." Lelouch stated and then hurriedly walked out of the barn. Not even stopping to think how he knew all those things about the man he just killed. C.C was pretty sure it was the "light" he had claimed to have seen, but decided not to ask about it yet. If what he said about the man was indeed true, then they had to hurry. She hurried after him.

**Nunnally**

She had a really bad feeling about Suzaku's sudden departure. She couldn't shake the feeling that it was directly linked to her and her lapse in judgment over the death of her brother. She had explicitly told the captain of Zero's little squad of soldiers to report any unusual things about their current mission before reporting to anyone else, but she wasn't sure about where the man's loyalties lied. She was sure that he was a professional and would follow orders, but she wasn't sure about if he would keep his mouth if _the _Zero asked him.

If Zero was anyone else but Suzaku, then she would have to fear a coup de tat, but she was aware that Suzaku wouldn't do that and his presence and his experience from fighting against the real Zero really helped her to solve most situations peacefully and to dominate the opponent with as little casualties as humanly possible when that was not possible. Cornelia and other members of the Royal family, along with other inviduals feared for their abilities in the art of war being on her side did make those cases few and far between, but only time would tell.

And if all of that wasn't enough, her seal had been burning like crazy since morning. It was maddeningly difficult to not scratch at it. She had fought down the urge for the whole day to avoid looking like an addict waiting for their next fix. That's what she felt like she was. It was all there, except for the actual drug. The shame, secrecy, distancing yourself from those you should count on...

"Please, God... Forgive me for what I have done." Nunnally muttered to herself as she was going over another that had been brought before her for her seal of approval. The woman who was the representative from the small country somewhere near the Mediterranean flinched at her words, as she probably thought she was going to go to war because of the paper pleading for the country to be acknowledged as an independent state still within the Union they had built. The look of bewilderment on her face as Nunnally handed the signed and approved treaty back to the woman was somewhat comical, but the way the woman stared at the paper in disbelief while walking out of the room made Nunnally stifle a laugh. Nunnally heard the woman let out a shout of such overabundant joy that Nunnally couldn't help the smile that spread on her face.

And just at that moment the seal burned into her flesh with intensity she hadn't felt since it had branded itself on her flesh. It was lucky she was stationary and there weren't any bodyguards or personal assistants in the room at the moment, since the pain made her clench her teeth and clutch the armrests of her wheelchair as the pain washed over her in slow, agonizing waves. The burning was gone after what couldn't be more than a second or two, but what felt like minutes. The pain was excruciating, but what made her heart race even after the pain faded were the feelings of despair, solitude and fear that made the burning seem more like a cry for help, than the side-effect of a pagan contract to bring back the dead.

A reminder about the fact that you are probably going to burn in hell for an eternity really sucks out the cheer from a day...

**Karen**

Karen woke up and her whole body ached. Her eyes were itchy as hell to make matters worse, but she thought it wasn't the best idea to rub them and trying to move her body made her whole body shout out its protest. Every joint in her body felt like they were full of shards of glass. How did she end up like this again?

_Kalren, I am stronger now, I know more. I can fix you, Kalren, I learned it. No more pain. I'll fix you, Kalren._

Zapan! What happened to Chiyo? Where was she? Where was Zapan? Had Lelouch been able to get away? Who brought her where she was now? She forced her eyes open and even though her vision was blurry the ceiling was unfamiliar to her. She tilted her head to the side, disregarding the mind numbing pain the movement caused in her neck and saw a drip of some clear liquid going into her arm. She shouldn't do anything to it before she could make sure if she was with friends, or not.

"Kallen, calm down. Nothing will hurt you anymore." Karen would have whipped her head toward the voice, but with her body as it was she could only roll it to the other side on the pillow. Seeing Suzaku wearing the Zero outfit with the mask raised above his head, probably for her not to freak out thinking he was Lelouch calmed her less than she thought. Suzaku promptly put the helmet back on and then continued with his distorted voice. "He has turned into something monstrous. Do you have any idea where he is right now?"

Suzaku was ruder she remembered, but she did agree with his judgment on Lelouch and she felt surprisingly calm about it. She thought she would be in a verge of a nervous breakdown, but she felt just sad and betrayed. She was also quite sure that those emotions would intensify when the drugs the hospital probably gave her wore off and she dreaded that moment.

"No." Her voice was raspy and it hurt to talk. Suzaku was quick to offer her a glass of water and after a glance he helped her head to a sitting position as she took a couple of careful sips from the glass. "The last I remember the water monster was going for Chiyo. Did she survive? What happened after I blacked out?"

"She is unharmed, but also she's... unwell" Suzaku said and the mask and the distorted voice made it hard to figure out what he meant, but after remembering the hellish experience she went through and the fact that she was not a battle-hardened soldier, but just a maid... The experience must have nearly broken her mind. "She'll get the best help there is, I'll make sure of that."

"We have to kill him. He has become something... unnatural." Karen said and didn't look at Suzaku. She couldn't look at Zero's mask again without remembering what Lelouch had been and what he has become now. She had cried and prayed for Lelouch not to be alive, but not like this. She knew that this couldn't be her doing, but could there be a possibility that her pleas had not gone unnoticed? Could she be responsible for this? Adding another layer of guilt and responsibility to what she was feeling right now was something she should avoid, but she couldn't help but wonder...

"It's not your fault. It couldn't be your fault, Kallen." Suzaku's glowed hand touched her shoulder and she couldn't help but appreciate the gesture and she was genuinely comforted by his words, but it did nothing for the guilt she felt. She might not have brought him back, but she had to put him back in his grave.

**Lelouch**

"The son's room is upstairs. Let's move fast, we should be as far away from this place as possible when they find the body." Lelouch said as he opened the door of the farmhouse with the spare key he had taken from a hollowed out rock next to the stairs to the porch. There was no logical way he could have known it was there, but he really didn't want to think about it. Bits and pieces of emotions and memories kept flooding past his consciousness as he walked up the stair. Fortunately, C.C had followed him quietly so far, so he wouldn't have to think about what he had become for that much longer.

He opened the second door on the left from the stairs without hesitation and wasn't surprised that it really was the son's room. He had always been a tidy boy, but Lelouch couldn't believe that such a model son existed. The kid had to have a dark secret or two he kept from his parents, but it wasn't his place to go rummaging through someone else's room for a curiosity he couldn't be sure was his own.

Don't think about it, just don't. Focus on finding the clothes you need right now. The monster you've become still needed clothes to blend into society.

No, don't think about it! It will slow you down when you really need to think fast!

"I never could beat you at chess, Lulu. Always thinking three moves ahead just wasn't enough." Lelouch snapped his head towards toward the voice and expected to find either another apparition of Zapan making fun of him, or C.C playing cruel tricks on him for dying. He wouldn't put it past her, but seeing only the empty room of the son of a man he had killed distressed him. Was he hallucinating now and taking the situation into account hallucinating _her _did seem appropriate.

No! Stop thinking about it! Concentrate on the situation at hand! I have to be out of the house in ten minutes if you want to get far enough, since I do not plan to risk Zapan breaking through by using his teleportation power.

"Stupid Lulu! Why did you use that power on me!" The voice came from the direction of the son's bed and he distinctively heard the springs of the mattress creak as someone sat down on it. "Now I'm in the dark and the others rest with me. We never die, Lulu."

He did not know which he feared more; turning back and actually seeing an apparition of Shirley sitting on the bed with her guts sliced open, or turning around to see an empty room once again. Was this it? Had he finally lost his mind? Had it taken an unwilling homicidal rampage and a sadistic entity with supernatural powers to do it? Could he not trust his mind anymore?

He turned around and saw only an empty room of a well behaved farmer's son. The bed was wrinkled like there had been someone sitting on the side of it, but that could have been there as he came in. He hadn't paid any attention to the bed as he came in, but now he would pay any price in the world to know.

Forget it. The clothes. Now.

Lelouch turned around and he felt like the air had turned into syrup. If he turned his back to the room, the voices would come back. He would just have to ignore them and get dressed. He opened the drawers and did find a shirt and jeans that fit him. The clothes weren't really his style, but that would make recognizing him harder and it's not like he had the luxury to be picky. He walked out of the room and turned towards the stairs.

"BOO!" Euphemia shouted and waved her hands in front of his face to frighten him. He jumped back and fell to the ground from shock. This was not just a voice; this was a honest to god hallucination. This was crazy taking to the umpth degree, this was... Zapan. How could he have been so stupid? Of course something like Zapan wouldn't take being locked away lying down. This was just another one of its tricks. He shouldn't pay it any mind.

"I don't hate you for killing me. I hate you for all the people that died because of your mistake. Making yourself a worse monster than you made to be doesn't fix anything, Lulu." She sounded like she was just about to break into sobs and Lelouch could actually believe it was Euphemia talking to him. How could Zapan get all the little details right? "It just hurts me to see you with all of this guilt, Lulu."

He blinked and Euphemia was gone. She had looked like she had when he had shot her. In her pink dress stained with blood. Even the stains of blood on her face were exactly like he remembered them.

"What's keeping you, Lelouch?" C.C voice made him flinch and his heart raced even faster for a second. He felt how blood had escaped from his face and how his eyes strained to bulge out of their sockets and fought to calm himself. There was no time for him to have a breakdown at this point. He had to calm down and stay sharp. "You were the one that told me to hurry. I found where they hid their 'rainy day' money... and a meth lab in the basement, but that's beside the point."

"I'm ready. We should leave this place." Lelouch got back up to his feetand was halfway up the stair when he heard the top of the stairs like someone stepped on it. Somehow he knew that the stairs did that.

"Oh, Lulu, you can't run from us." Shirley cooed from top of the stairs. Sounding exactly like he remembered her. Why was Zapan doing this? What could it possibly gain from it? Lelouch would not crack under these kinds of methods. Was he really just going insane?

" _Lo! Death has reared himself a throne._

_In a strange city lying alone_

_Far down within the dim West,_

_Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best_

_Have gone to their eternal rest."_

Lelouch froze in midstep. How could Zapan know about that? That was Edgar Allan Poe! He faintly remembered helping Shirley with her homework and helping her translate and breakdown the poem Shirley was reciting. Was Zapan a better liar and manipulator he had given it credit, or was this something different?

"You said it was just the product of a morbid, but brilliant mind. It was clear that you didn't even have to look at the book to recite it, but you still did to not look like a geek. Of course soon after that... You found a purpose higher than reciting Poe with me." Shirley's voice wavered at this statement and Lelouch had to fight the urge to turn around and comfort her. This was just one of Zapan's tricks to make him break. He shouldn't give into these visions. They were not real.

"Now all I can think about is that poem." Lelouch walked down the rest of the stairs and tried to act like he hadn't heard anything, but C.C still gave him a strange look. He didn't even glance at the top of the stairs. They walked out of the house and Lelouch was sure that C.C was staring at him and wondering why he was so pale and why he was so twitchy. He knew he was acting like a complete maniac. Scared of every shadow and movement, but he just couldn't calm himself. They could appear from any direction and at any time. They were always there, waiting for him in his mind. Persuading him into believing into them, but he would not be fooled. He knew they were both dead! He had killed them both, directly, or indirectly, but their deaths were on his conscience.

C.C and Lelouch had run in silence for an hour or so. Either it was the Code in C.C that allowed her to run for so long, or it was just that she was exceptionally fit. Lelouch found no trouble running faster than C.C did and didn't really feel tired when C.C did stop to take a breath. They were out of the probable search radius of the local police, so he just sat down next to C.C. Letting her rest her head on his shoulder and locking hand felt so natural for him that he didn't even notice it until he looked down. It felt good, solid, real. He needed her as much as she needed him. He might be dense, but he was not blind. She had closed her eyes and her breathing was still ragged. Her face was covered in sweat and her hair clung to her cheeks, but Lelouch could only think about how sexy her blushed face looked and how full her lips were.

Every problem he e

* * *

ver had in his life had come from the fact that he over thought things; Always thought several moves ahead in every choice in his rather short life. And where had that got him; dead and reanimated as a bloodthirsty monster. Maybe the secret to living a happy life to just stop thinking about the consequences and just go with what you know to be right _just at that moment_.

Well, he wasn't sure; he didn't know what would come out or how it would benefit him, or how she would take it, but what he knew was that it was what he wanted and needed then and there.

But that didn't change the fact that he was embracing C.C as he planted a tentative and awkward kiss on her lips. He didn't know what would come of it and the nervousness he felt was more than the fear he had felt when the visions of the people he had killed plagued him. C.C opened her eyes and looked into his as she caught her breath. The look in her eyes was inquisitive and Lelouch thought that it was the kind of inquisitive look only possible in their situation.

The "Is he really himself, or is this a way for the entity inside him to throw me of guard" kind of look.

The way she smiled at him and pressed herself tighter against him was more than enough of an answer.

He had no plans for the future and didn't know what would come next, but just being there with _her _felt so right he didn't care. He was probably losing his mind, if it was because of the thing inside him, or just what he'd been through because of it was to be determined, but he was undoubtedly losing his mind.

With C.C he felt like the whole world melted away as they embraced each other. Staying locked in an embrace where they drew strength from each other and Lelouch hid any weakness he had for C.C to give him the strength he needed to go on.

* * *

**Yeah, that's that. I'll continue when I can, but it seems pretty obvious that Leouch is in the process of fighting for his sanity. Seeing how it plays out is entertaining for me as well, since what I write, I usually make up as I go.  
**

**Read and review, people!**


	7. The City Under The Sea

**READ IT!  
**

* * *

**Seventh Chapter**

**The City Under The Sea  
**

"Lelouch, what do you see?" C.C asked after a good hour of just lying there side by side. She liked the silence because it gave her time to make sure Lelouch was real and the only thing stopping Lelouch' slip into madness seemed to be her. She didn't know if it was the thing's attempts of breaking through the wall she had built inside Lelouch's psyche, or the fact she had built it in the first place that made him see things that weren't there. The "bricks" she used to build the wall in the first place had to come from Lelouch's own mind, so she was worried that she had taken the strength he needed to stay sane.

"Stars, only the boring old stars." He was lying there, desperately trying not to think of anything, holding her hand. She would have liked to stay like this longer, but as fate had it, she was also telepathic, so she was aware of Lelouch's hallucinations. For some reason she couldn't find out what Lelouch was seeing exactly. All she could register was his terrified reassurances that what he saw was not real.

"Lelouch, don't start lying to me now." Through their joined hands she could feel the psychological pain it caused him to acknowledge his hallucinations again. They must really be something for Lelouch to react like this. He had not been exactly sane from the get go, but at least he had always had the power to stay lucid. C.C didn't think she could forgive herself if she had taken that power from him. Well, she had saved him from being taken over by a supernatural entity, but still. "Tell me, I can help you."

"They're here, they're both here." Lelouch said in barely a whisper. C.C nudged herself closer and pressed herself against him. She needed the closeness to read his mind more clearly and he needed it to stay sane.

"Who are here, Lelouch? Who do you see?" C.C asked, still unable to get a clear picture. It could be the heavy emotional baggage and his own denial that stopped her, but she was almost certain it was the supernatural entity inside Lelouch that was causing this.

"Shirley and Euphemia, they're both standing over there... talking to each other." Lelouch said, sounding like he didn't believe it himself either. That was almost a certain sign that the visions were caused by the entity inside him, rather than solely by his own guilt. The choice of those two being the apparitions was a smart one and C.C had to admit that the entity either had more experience in mental manipulation than she thought, or it had a natural affinity for it. "Speaking of horrible things, begging me to put a stop to them."

"... You should not pay them any mind. They are just hallucinations that Zapan is using to control you. Do not do anything they ask of you." Why would the apparitions be talking to each other? To validate that they are real in Lelouch's eyes? Would Lelouch imagine a situation where those two would start talking, purely out of his guilt? What exactly was going on here?

**Jessica**

Her name was Jessica, she was an orphan, so she didn't have a last name yet. She hoped it would be a nice one, but she was also aware of the possibility no family would have her and one would just be decided for her. The chance for her not to be accepted would be the fact she was unusual and adoptive families wanted a child that looked like them. Maybe something like Popescu, or Illiescu... Well, anything that ended with "escu", now that she thought about it. She wanted to be normal, she wanted to leave this behind her, she wanted to die, she wanted justice.

_Ahem!_

There was a nice sister by the name of Geanta and there was a delightfully normal name, the sister herself was as nice as any saint and got as little recognition for it as they had. Perhaps that was why she thought the name was so delightful, she wanted a mother like her? Yes, she would have liked that, no question about it. Even the adults working with her in the orphanage wanted her to mother them. She just had that air about her. She was gorgeous and she never thought of herself. She was someone to protect for boys and someone to look up to for girls. She was the perfect mother in the orphanage; she made it that much easier to remain happy through the lonely hours of the night without anyone looking out for them.

_We can help you._

Of course, that excluded her. She was someone cursed, someone wicked from birth. What else could explain the things that had happened to her? What else could explain her intellect, damning her to realize the evil of that priest, still unable to make any difference? What else could explain the God she praised to abandon her so? How many prayers would it take for Him to help her; A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand?

_Him? You mean god? We might not be Him, but we want to help you. You'll just have to... How do we put this? Trust, is it trust? He said "let in", but that's just gibberish._

"_Yes, it certainly did say that. How come you're so sure it's a "he"?"_

"Who's there?" Jessica sat up on her bed and scanned the shadows. She couldn't see anyone in the room that didn't belong there. There were only the sleeping forms of the girls that slept in the same room as her. The voice she had heard had only been a whisper, but she was somehow sure it hadn't been any of them.

_The hell? Now she hears us! Yeah, we're right here. We're not really sure how or why, but we're here._

It must have been her imagination. She was so desperate for someone to save her that she started to hear voices in the dark. She would rather not lose her mind, even though that seemed inevitable the way her life had turned in a darker path.

"_Hah! She's ignoring you, Shirley-chan. Clearly she prefers talking to royalty over someone like you." _The voice wasn't a whisper, like she had originally thought; it was just muted, like the person talking was behind a wall. Who the hell was this person anyways, did she say she was royalty? Who the hell was this "Shirley-chan" she talked to?

_We might be dead, but that doesn't mean I can't slap you if you don't stop talking like a condescending bitch!_

"_Like you would have the gall to assault a princess. You might be a noble, but you're still below –"_

What the hell was going on? Was she arguing with someone? So, she was a princess? There was a ghost of a princess talking to her. She hadn't seen that coming.

"_You... You bitch! You slapped me!"_ Oh, now the other one slapped the one calling herself a princess. This was interesting and all, but having her hallucinations fighting with each other was not normal, right? Was she so screwed up already that even her hallucinations didn't make sense? But then again, if what identified her as insane was insane in itself, thus saying his insanity was insane, then did that actually make him sane, but with a little bit of "in" thrown in the mix.

_You had it coming to you. Anyways, we're not here to argue with each other, are we? Look, she's staring out into nothing like a retarded puppy._

"_That's a mean, Shirley-chan. She's deep in thought about this, that's all. This must be terribly confusing for her. Okay, honey, we're... well, yeah, you could say we really are ghosts, now that I think about it. That's not the point of this whole conversation, though." _Jessica had a feeling she should be more alarmed about hearing voices, but if she was developing a different personality, then maybe only one of them would have to suffer through her life. This other voice in her head sounded very nice and refined and the other one seemed to be snarky and confident, all the things she wished to be, in other words.

"_Oh, you poor thing... I'm sorry about putting it in such crude terms, but we can give you power, true power over your oppressors. The power you could use for justice, or for revenge. All you'll have to do is accept a name into you... Well, more like; say it out loud with true intent, but that's the way he phrased it." _The refined and nice voice said with her voice full of sympathy for her. This was all very weird, would she have the imagination to come up with this whole business with accepting names, or was this real? Was there really something out there ready to help her out of her torture and heartache?

_Wait a minute, how much do you know? I'm just here because of the circumstances of my death, but how much do you know? What will happen to this girl when she says his name? You're holding something back, aren't you?_

"What is the name? What do I have to say?" The girl said, a resolute stillness settling in her eyes, like she had just given up, grabbed the single lifeline she had been thrown. All of her cheerful thinking, the shine in her eyes saying she thought the world to be one big adventure to unravel before her was gone, dropped like the fragile mask it was. Shattered and consumed by the great hollow place inside her Zapan wished to fulfil.

_Don't say it! Don't make her do this, please! She can still be saved, we can convince Lelouch to come here! This doesn't need to happen, Euphemia! Please stop, please!_

"_Zapan, accept him in your heart and be avenged. They will all pay for all they have done." _There was moment of hesitation, but it was more the girl just saying her goodbyes in her mind. She was smart, terribly so and knew what the kind woman was leaving out. She was probably going to die if this was real. And if it wasn't, she might as well.

"Zapan, I welcome you!" The girl shouted, without actually meaning to do so. There was a second of silence when nothing happened, but just as she started thinking that she was crazy both the princess and Shirley appeared before her with untold grief in their eyes. The light that shone behind them struck her down and she felt all her fears dissolve and become part of the beautiful light.

**Nunnally**

"Aaiie!" Nunnally cried out before she could stop herself and her hand flew over to where the mark of her sin had burned. The mark was burning into her and she was surprised it wasn't glowing through the fabric of her clothes. She had taken precautions and bandaged her shoulder, just in case. Still, with the mind numbing pain it was now searing into her body it didn't really matter. The pain had surprised her and it she was sure her face was an unhealthy gray, but she had to think of an excuse that would not expose the mark.

"Nunnally, are you alright?" Suzaku asked, rushing to her side before any of her assigned bodyguards. He was too much of a softie to remember to call her "Queen" all the time, so anyone around them had presumed that calling the supreme commander of Britannia's armed forces by their first name was something only Zero could do and left it at that. It was a lucky coincidence no one had been able to make the connection, or even start to suspect it. Nunnally had been forced to reprimand high commanders in her army from doing the same because of this, but Suzaku was enough of a genius to be worth it. He had been an invaluable asset in giving back the world's independence in small, containable chunks.

"I'm alright, don't worry. It's just a cramp, nothing to worry about." Nunnaly said and tried to smile, but she could feel the cold sweat forming on her forehead. Would Suzaku really believe that she, who was going through painful therapy to strengthen her legs, would react so strongly to a simple cramp? The excuse was shaky at best and she could only hope he believed she was putting up a front for the other people in earshot, trying to hide a heart attack. Now that she thought about it, claiming it to be just that would probably convince Suzaku, since she's been the weak blind girl in a wheelchair for the whole time she'd known him, so the stress of governing the world could have adverse effects.

"The Queen will be withdrawing to her quarters and any further questions will be answered by the Royal embassy spokesperson, thank you!" Suzaku shouted out in a tone that left no room for question and the reporters sighed in disappointment, since they didn't dare to talk back to the all-powerful force that was Zero. The fearsome image of the mysterious terrorist her brother had built was also very useful when it came to politics and Nunnally usually didn't want to know how Suzaku kept up that image in the political sea, which was already in turmoil. Some of the people that were against her policies had gone missing at very convenient times and Suzaku never had a solid alibi for these times, which was probably intentional, since he had the resources to fabricate one easily.

Suzaku wheeled her out of the press conference and the Royal embassy spokesperson passed them, straightening his tie and carrying notes about the incident she was informing the world about before her stroke. It was just informing the public about the force used against a rogue faction of small country that wanted their independence back _now _and not in the stable and safe way Nunnally was giving them. The execution of all Britannian nobles and rioting in the street would have followed if the faction had been able to topple the government, so lethal force had been implemented. An organisation as gigantic as Britannia didn't have the luxury of going easy on those trying to upset the status quo just for their childish rebellion. She understood that, but killing people that fought for what they believed to be right was heartbreaking nonetheless.

"What is it? Are you really okay?" Suzaku asked as they entered the room that had been provided for them for the remainder of the press conference. They had flown into the country where the incident took place to quell any possible uprising by showing that Britannia cared even that much. The pain was intense and radiated throughout her body, but now she had started to get used to it and could function somewhat.

"I don't know, but I think it's passing now. I just need a minute, alone. Schedule a time with the doctor, just to be sure." Nunnaly said, trying to sound as normal as possible. Suzaku stared at her for a moment, but then nodded and started dialling the number of her personal physician as he walked out of the room and left her alone, as per her request. Seeing a doctor was the last thing she wanted, but it would have sounded strange if she hadn't proposed it herself. Suzaku closed the door behind him and no doubt told the security guards not to let anyone in beside him.

With Suzaku out of sight and the room swiped for surveillance equipment she made her way to the dress table in the room and started the elaborate task of taking off her top and seeing what had happened to the mark of her sin. She liked pretty dresses fine, but the fancier they got, the more elaborate they were to put on and take off. Of course, when she mentioned this to Suzaku, he hired dozens of seamstresses and designer just to make her clothes that looked the same, but were easier to wear, but Nunnally felt guilty about having it even easier she already did and ended up wearing the originals.

When she did unravel her top and undid the bandages she did find the mark of her sin glowing a faint aqua light, but that wasn't the shocking part. The shocking part was the fact that it had changed from the last time she'd seen it. It had been a simple coloured ring by her left shoulder with slightly changing figures reaching towards her heart. Now that ring of coloured light had become three thirds of a complete circle and the figures reaching for her heart were becoming more pronounced. The light was pulsating and she thought she saw the figures around her heart grow and darken as she looked at them.

She couldn't be sure, but she was pretty certain that it wasn't good. Even if it was hurting her, she couldn't let anyone know. Great, now she had to think of an excuse to skip the doctor's visit...

**Lelouch**

The pain was piercing and it was so sudden Lelouch stumbled to the ground, holding his chest. As soon as it had come, it was gone and only thing he had were the foreign images and sounds now playing in his head, Images of children, both laughing and crying, over the span of years. Leaving an orphanage, or staying and growing up. He witnessed it all through eyes that were not his and experienced feelings that he had no claim to. Then it was gone as well and he didn't even have a name to put to the foreign memories. Someone had just died and Lelouch had seen their life pass in front of his eyes, for some reason.

It didn't take much to know what had just happened. Zapan had just killed someone and was making sure Lelouch knew about it. Lelouch got back up on his feet and scanned his surroundings, looking for a clue as to where Zapan was killing people to punish him for going against it. He saw the phantom of Shirley waving to him desperately at a start of a dirt road going into a patch of a forest.

"Lelouch! Lelouch, what happened? Tell me, please!" C.C called out and turned Lelouch to her worried face. She was rather lively compared to the calm and collected witch she had been, now that Lelouch thought about it. It was entirely possible that she was the same as Shirley was, a phantom that Zapan had created to make his mind unstable. If that were the case, then it was devilishly clever and cruel, giving him one phantom to trust and lean on, just to rip it away to break him. The more he thought about, the more it made sense and Lelouch ignored C.C as he started running towards Shirley's phantom.

"Lelouch, what do you see? Talk to me!" C.C screamed with worry and fear in her voice Lelouch had not heard from the introverted witch before. She was also surprisingly lagging behind Lelouch as he ran towards where Shirley's phantom had pointed towards. C.C had been in top physical condition, probably because of her Code regenerating her tissues constantly. Lelouch was puzzled by this and wondered why Zapan would make such a mistake if he wanted for him to believe this was C.C? Then again, from his rough estimate he was running a hundred meters in 8 seconds without even getting out of breath, uphill on a dark dirt road. That was something that should have been impossible for him with his physical make up and the way he lived, or had lived, avoiding physical exertion.

Could this whole thing be a hallucination? Some form of an afterlife, maybe purgatory given the ghastly things that had happened to him. It might even be Hell if things kept on getting worse at the rate they were going now. He saw a sliver of light at the end of the road from between the dark trees and skidded to a halt just before stepping on the white ground and inhaling the cold air.

The ground was covered in snow and snowflakes still lazily drifted in the air, and the whole scene looked like something out of a snow globe, with the mansion in a small field in the woods covered in fresh now. No matter how idyllic the scene looked Lelouch dreaded stepping on the fresh snow on the ground. The edge between the quiet summer night and the mansion covered in fresh snow was too exact to be natural. This was all part of what Zapan had done here and treading on it without a plan would be something akin to suicide, though Lelouch had a feeling Zapan knew better than to kill him.

"Why the hell..." C.C gasped out as she stopped behind him. "Are you ignoring me!" She caught her breath as Lelouch tried to figure out the best way to go about charging into enemy territory. It was certain that snowfall this exact and sudden was not normal and Lelouch could _feel_ Zapan in the snowy landscape. There was a sick feeling of coldness in the air that had nothing to do with the snow, there was something locked inside him that resonated with the power that brought forth the snowy landscape.

"I want to trust you, but I am not sure if this is reality right now. You know that in this situation you would be the only one I would believe. Zapan has demonstrated an ability to make me see things that are not there. For now, I cannot believe anything you say." Lelouch didn't turn around to see C.C's reaction. This was a new kind of mental game he had to play and letting C.C validate her existence more than she already had would only make the possible affect her betrayal would have on his mental fortitude even greater.

No horrifying monster jumped out from the snow and the eerie silence and stillness remained. From the strange attack/vision there should be a great deal of children here, but Lelouch doubted they were asleep. He didn't know much about whatever was inside him now, but this was not meant to attack him directly. This was meant to send him a message, but it was also an opportunity to find out more about what Zapan was. Lelouch walked toward the building and felt the cold creep into him and the thing inside him stir. It really did seem that it had done this somehow. Stepping into the supposed orphanage felt like walking into a freezer.

White, it was all white, the air was bitingly cold and dry and everything had a steady covering of frost over it. The light streaming through the windows was intensified and reflected again to give the illusion of a nearly endless space. After a few seconds Lelouch could make out where the floor and wall met and make out the real dimensions of the place. He was standing in the foyer of the building he was in, there was a door covered in frost a few steps to his left and coat hangers and shoe racks for the dozens of children he had seen. He tried picking up one of the shoes on impulse, but they were frozen into one solid object. The few fingers he had tried to pick up the shoe with started feeling very cold and pain started creeping up from where he was touching the frozen footwear. The tips of his fingers had already frozen onto the shoes, so as he reflexively pulled his hand away, he ripped out the ends of his fingers and some blood splatter onto the wall.

Instead of simply freezing into red drops, the blood was immediately covered by the frost and then started to move and grow, while moving together. The few drops of blood grew into a fist-sized protrusion on the wall. Lelouch didn't dare move, as if to not agitate the thing, but when the protrusion suddenly imploded in itself and a small node of green light raced off along the frost, leaving a defrosted streak in its wake, he stumbled back. Luckily C.C caught him before he made the mistake of balancing himself with his hands on the opposing wall.

"I'm seriously starting to consider I damaged your brain while locking that thing away." C.C said and it got even colder in the dead orphanage. Lelouch straightened himself and considered what he had done and thought from Zero's perspective. He was the calculative tactical genius, as long as he thought of himself as Lelouch, he was bound to play the role he had been accustomed to be playing. He had been acting like a paranoid psychopath for no other reason than his limited understanding of Zapan's power. There were too little legitimate reasons to think of C.C as a hallucination.

"A slight case of paranoia and all that we've been through, actually. I'm sorry about calling you a figment of my imagination, C.C."

"There was some sense in your argument, just enough for me to not smack you over the head. Do you understand this _"Zapan" _better now?" C.C asked as Lelouch righted himself. Did she think he had been controlled by the entity, or did she really believe in his ability to reason that much? No matter, really, since he had already learned a few things from past experiences.

"It's water, Zapan seems to be able to control water. I don't know if this power stems from some kind of elemental mysticism, or if it is some by-product of however I was resurrected, but it seems to have complete control over the properties and shape of water." Lelouch stated everything he knew for certain, while trying to skim any other facts from his fragmented mind. Whatever C.C had done to give him control had messed with his mental capacity, since focusing was getting harder and harder. It was like he was drunk, but without the numbing effect and reckless abandon "We need to keep going."

Lelouch pushed himself both mentally and physically to keep walking down the hall. C.C had ever so lightly been pulling him toward the door. As tempting as it sounded to leave and forget this place, Zapan's power had gotten stronger at the Stadtfield mansion after he killed people. He didn't know how it worked exactly, but if there was a chance of even the tiniest piece of the monster inside him feeding on the death of dozens of children, then he had to stop it before it spread any further.

"Why isn't it colder in here? If touching a shoe made your skin rip, then we should have frostbite already." C.C glanced back at the entrance and then to the trail of thawed frost on the wall. "See, it's not even thawing where we step. Is Zapan controlling the water, rather than freezing it?"

C.C was trying to figure it out when Lelouch was having trouble keeping his head straight. His hands were shaking and he had to blink constantly to clear his vision. Was it the place that was affecting him, or was he just terrified? The first thing he had learnt of Zapan was that he had no moral compass at all. He was a juvenile amalgamation of selfish desires and power, with no moral guidelines, or purpose to direct or hold him back. He didn't want to die, but if dying would mean Zapan would be stopped, then he would do it.

"_Lulu, please stop trying to lock Zapan in, he is scared and desperate." _A voice with a strange echo to her voice said somewhere nearby. The blinding whiteness and his overall difficulties in thinking made it hard to place it. He glanced over to C.C and she pointed to a door to their right. He hadn't even noticed the doorway with his swimming vision. He rammed his shoulder into the door, the wood splintered at the lock with a sharp crack. It seemed like he was still inhumanly strong. He had to fall to his knees to stop his hands from touching the floor. _"Zapan doesn't understand what he's doing. All he knows is that you shunned him and tried to lock him away. He really dislikes the green haired girl, too…"_

Lelouch knew he should get up, walk out of the room and ignore everything and anything Zapan's conjured illusion said, but instead he stayed there on the ground, on his knees. The room he had forced his way into was one of the rooms where the orphans slept. It was obvious that the frost had moved fast and from one end of the room to another, since the bodies on one side of the room where still wrapped up in their blankets and frozen into the picture of innocence and tranquillity. On the side Lelouch had stumbled into there were children frozenwhile sitting up in their beds, frozen snapshots of what had happened. Row by row the positions and places where the children had frozen changed,, but just at Lelouch's end of the room was the most gruesome example of what had happened. Lelouch had lost the tips of his fingers when even touching the already still frost, but now he saw feet and whole legs frozen on the floor while the rest laid only a step or two after them. Lelouch glanced back and saw shattered pieces of the corpses he had smashed through to get into the room. They were frozen solid and had broken like glass all around him. He had a feeling he should be screaming, crying, or having any kind of emotional response to this, but he felt drained already. What's a few children over his bloody conquest of the world?

"Shirley Fenette, right? I don't know why Zapan is showing us a picture of you, but we know you cannot be real. Lelouch watched life ebb out of you personally, Zapan should know that." C.C stepped in front of Lelouch, taking charge when he was clearly not fit to do so. Shirley's image was projected on a mirror made out of ice. The transparency of the ice gave her form some depth and made the illusion that more convincing. Shirley's form crossed her arms and Lelouch noted the blood staining her clothes. She was exactly like he remembered. "You are a crude attempt at manipulating Lelouch while he's down."

"_Thy soul shall find itself alone_

_'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;_

_Not one, of all the crowd, to pry_

_Into thine hour of secrecy._

_Be silent in that solitude,_

_Which is not loneliness- for then_

_The spirits of the dead, who stood _

_In life before thee, are again_

_In death around thee, and their will_

_Shall overshadow thee; be still."_

"Yes, yes, Edgar Allan Poe. Fitting, taken the situation we're in, but I doubt it has anything to do with why you're here." C.C interrupted the image of Shirley with an irritated twinge in her voice. Shirley snapped her mouth shut and then looked away and scratched the back of her head embarrassedly. The movement made her wound open a little and Lelouch had to look away.

"_Zapan finds the poems utterly fascinating. I think he sees the pictures the words paint in my head, he's admitted as much. I get more time outside if I quote them, that's all. What I'm trying to say that I truly believe I am alive. I remember who I am and remember Lulu shouting for me to live as…"_ Shirley trailed off as her hands fell to her abdomen. Lelouch forced himself to stand next to C.C as the image of Shirley relived her death. Shirley had not been someone that would just ignore the carnage Lelouch was literally standing in. This Shirley being an apparition was very likely, but he still wanted to be sure.

"Shirley, how can you stand there when you've seen Zapan killing _children? _ You abhorred violence, so why does such horror get no reaction from you?" Shirley looked up to Lelouch and spread her arms to her sides, showing the horizontal wound on her stomach.

"_I am dead; I have no tears to shed, or a body to do so. I am powerless to stop Zapan, but you are the one who caused this by making him desperate. You trapped me in this limbo out of your own hubris and now you judge me for obeying your command, like you did with Euphemia." _She paused to glance to her right. Lelouch remembered that was where the trail of thawed frost lead towards. _"Dying can change a person, Lulu. You should be the one person that can understand that." _Shirley waved a hand and the sheet of ice she was projected onto cracked and became just a curiously formed hunk of ice.

"The fact she knew about Euphemia just proves that she's an illusion, Lelouch. You never told Shirley that you had anything to do with her death. We need to stay focused on stopping this before it spreads." C.C hurriedly noted as Lelouch's eyes widened. She was right, there was no way that Shirley or Euphemia were trapped in limbo with Zapan. It was impossible and to even consider it would be foolish.

"Yes, let's go. This building didn't seem that big on the outside, Zapan should be close." Lelouch started walking between the beds, seeing the massacre play out in reverse in the frozen bodies. He had something that was capable of doing something like this inside him. He was a dead man with no right to live and yet he had taken life away from those who had every right to it. Was being a monster the only thing he was good at? He didn't talk or pay much attention to his surroundings as he rushed to the door on the other side of the room. He could hva egone out the door he had come in from, but wading through the frozen and smashed remains of children again could as well convince him to go straight for the door leading out.

The trail of the strange light his blood had turned into was not hard to follow. Every door they passed had not only frosted over, but had been covered by a layer of glass to stop them from prying. It would take too long to try and kick and push the door down, without touching the ice and empowering Zapan further, so they kept following the trail. It stopped at a door that was totally devoid of frost.

"_Do come in, Lelouch, but do brace yourself." _ A feminine voice he recognized called from the other side of the door. He had already seen the frozen and crushed remains of orphaned children, what could there be to brace for. He pushed the door open a little more tentatively than he had hoped and immediately had his answer. He had seen death, now he had to face the survivors. There was a shining and translucent statue in the form of Euphemia, standing over a man who had been impaled on what Lelouch presumed to be his desk.

"_Now, now, you've done worse things, to a lot more people. For example: forcing me to kill hundreds of people against my will. And then there were all those innocent people that got in the way of your plans, Shirley's been rather vocal about that, and let's not forget that whole thing with you taking over the world; Terrible, truly and utterly heinous." _Euphemia's voice was distant, but it was definitely coming from the statue of ice. The statue crackled and popped as it turned to face Lelouch and the ice broke and mended together again to allow such movement. There was a green light within the statue's chest that pulsated lazily and reverberated as Euphemia spoke. The statue's expression shifted into a cordial smile, but Lelouch barely noticed it from noticing how blood had frozen and caked over the statue's hands and torso in several layers.

"Are you with the police?" A child's voice piped out from their right. Lelouch and C.C turned to see four children seated on a small sofa and a recliner, three on the sofa and one on the recliner. The one sitting in the recliner had glowing aqua eyes and dark circles under her eyes. Her breath was the only one that fumed out. The other three looked frightened, but didn't avert their eyes from the man butchered on the table. They gave them a glance and then continued glaring. "Oh, of course you're not. I can see him in you, the one who saved us and the one who gave me the ability to do this."

"This is wrong! Don't you see that Zapan is only using you to hurt others? I'm sure you didn''t mean to –"

"_Ah, Lelouch, I know what you're going to say and I also know you're wrong. She knew full well what she was doing. She tried to be merciful and make it fast, but it didn't work out as planned for all of them. I'm sure you stumbled on the outcome on your way in."_

"Did you make a deal?" C.C asked the aqua-eyed girl in a shaky voice. She didn't seem shaken by the macabre spectacle in front of her, but by a revelation that was dawning on her. "Did you agree to any terms, maybe call out a name, or answer a question?"

"_Ah, so you know how it works, witch? I would like to hear about this in more detail before I conclude my business here." _Euphemia's statue turned back to the man on the table and extended a hand to the spike of ice jutting out from the man's chest. Her hand melded into the spike and she pulled the spike up a few inches and the man gurgled in pain, writhed in the agony Euphemia's small motions brought the slowly dying man. Euphemia reached her free hand to the man's stomach and the fingers jutted into his flesh like icicles. She pulled her hand away, but now there was a chunk of frozen meat between her fingers. The man's gurgles became more irregular and loud. There was no way he should have been still alive.

"_You see, I would never have come up with this on my own. The girl has a mind for these things, but she says this guy gave her the idea. See, the point of torture is not how long you can keep someone alive while hurting them; it's about just how much can you do while keeping them alive." _Euphemia dropped the already thawing chunk of intestines and organs at her feet. _"She says our esteemed priest here has been tutoring her, that she has no friends she hadn't seen torn apart. Also, unlike Zapan, she didn't find it amusing or entertaining."_

"You're lying. There is no reason for us to believe anything you say. Zapan is clearly controlling that girl and you're just a crude copy fashioned out of Lelouch's memories and fears." C.C sounded like she was sure of what she was saying, but her body language told of fear and doubt. Lelouch had become rather good at reading people while being Zero. "There is no other reason for these murders than petty revenge, the Euphemia Lelouch knew would have found this monstrous. Hell, _I _find this monstrous and I've seen things that made my skin crawl and decided not to stop it."

"I don't know you people, but I've done more than get my revenge. The other children here chose to look away as he locked us in that special room. I've seen four other children be taken during the night and never return, I've seen two be tortured, raped and killed in front of me. This man deserves this and these three will live for what I have done." The girl paused to glance at the children next to her, all around the age of ten and female, as far as Lelouch could tell. The image she was painting was starting to seem all too plausible, there hadn't been any vacant beds in the room he had passed through, the number of the bodies had matched the beds. "I have regrets, but I would do it again."

"_There are many evil people you could rid of with Zapan's power, Lelouch. There are many innocents that could live if you were to direct his power, and many villains that would fall."_ Euphemia's icy fingers had grown in length and now they sunk into the man's knee, eliciting a drawn out and loud gurgle from his pained throat as she closed her grip on his kneecap and pulled it out with frightening ease. The sound of cartilage and tendons cracking and snapping made him sick, but didn't make the children sitting on the sofa even avert their eyes. _"If you keep him locked up, you will always have him scratching away at your sanity, struggling to get out. You will not die before that happens and he will grow twisted and cruel in the darkness… Well, more twisted and cruel than now."_

"Enough!" C.C grunted out as she slammed a telescopic baton on the side of the statue of Euphemia. The baton was made out of steel and the icy statue cracked into countless pieces from the impact. Lelouch wasn't surprised that C.C was armed, but the speed she whipped the baton out did. He had been standing there, just watching the show Zapan had orchestrated without any objection. It was good thing C.C was there to snap him out of it. The headless statue didn't react to losing its head in physical way. The aqua light at its chest started pulsating faster and glowing brighter as the air grew cold and the ice started to reform. Lelouch stepped back and twisted the door handle out of the door, noting that he was already relying on his enhanced strength, and jammed the metallic object into the light. Zapan had been kept away before by a piece of rock when he spoke to Suzaku and had reacted violently to the shotgun pellets, so Lelouch hoped metal would stop Zapan from freezing them solid this time. Lelouch felt something rushing up his arm as the light dimmed –

_He was back in the mirrored lake, standing on the dead calm surface of the black lake he assumed represented Zapan. It made even more sense now that he knew that Zapan's main power was control of water. The teleportation was probably some kind of application of that, or a completely separate ability the supernatural monster had._ _He looked up and saw a countless nodes of green light hanging in the air, drifting around a larger, but a duller light. Seeing them surprised him because they hadn't been reflected in the water._

"_Are you trying to threaten me into releasing you?" Lelouch asked and turned to look into the dark water below him. This time he had no reflection to talk to, but could see two nodes of green light in the depths below. He thought this to represent the fact Zapan was locked away inside him._

"_I am there, I am here." Zapan's voice was distant, but Lelouch had no trouble hearing it. There was something in his chest that felt in synch with every syllable, some leathery thing that slithered around and thrashed against its restraints._

"_What do you mean by that? You can be in two places at once, is that it?" There was no echo and he couldn't feel his lips move, but he thought he was shouting, like he was trying to make his voice reach Zapan, all the way down in the depths._

"_Two… yes. Mind here, mindless there. Nice girls there, Zapan here, no throne, in a strange city lying alone." Zapan's voice didn't sound like anything, but Lelouch imagined he was very pleased with himself for quoting Edgar Allan Poe. The way it formed its sentences and acted hinted toward Zapan having a simple mind, or juvenile at least. It sounded like a child testing out a new word he had learnt that day._

"_Do you… Do you have to kill?" Lelouch asked, letting his eyes trace the lights floating above him. Was Euphemia's offer so unreasonable? He knew how powerful Zapan was, he knew about the hunger he felt and that killing eased it. Zapan was a powerful thing and would it be so bad to choose who it killed? If there was a chance for him to keep making the world a better place, then why wouldn't he take it? He had caused the deaths of thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps millions. Why would killing people personally be that much worse?_

"_I hunger, I grow. I need the light, I am in darkness." Yes, the light, Zapan had mentioned that before. Lelouch had come to the conclusion that it was the life in people, their soul, if you will. Zapan fed on souls, in the very thing that made people who they were. That would make what Zapan did worse than what he had done. He would be stealing away their chance of any kind of afterlife; instead, they would be torn apart and eaten by Zapan._

_Then again, he had been dead for several days, the exact number of days was not sure to him, but he knew there was only dark silence after death. There was neither heaven nor hell, so at least Zapan would be satiated by whatever death he would bring._

"_If I let you out, would you kill who I tell you to kill?" Lelouch asked, looking Zapan straight in the eye._

"_Yes."_

"_Will you give me use of your power?"_

"_You cannot use it. You are weak, you cannot feel it."_

"_Will you use your power the way I tell you to?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Why did you make me see Euphemia and Shirley? How did you know about them?" This time he had annoyance in his voice. He couldn't blame Zapan for choosing the best visions to impact him, but he wanted know how he knew to use them._

"_They were here; under the sea, with the others, far down within the dim West, the good and the bad and the worst and the best. They talked, they knew, they are a light." It took Lelouch a moment to decipher Zapan's poetry riddled ramblings, but he had called Shirley and Euphemia "lights" and that they were with him, in his part of Lelouch's psyche._

"_They are a light? Do you mean like the light in people, like in Kallen?"_

"_Not like Kalren, no, their own light, bright, hollow." Lelouch was sure Zapan was describing them like he saw them, but it sounded gibberish to him. Shirley and Euphemia were their own lights, but bright and hollow? He would have to think of this later._

"_Fine, you will be free of your isolation. Do not come out if I don't call you. You will have your lights, but I will be calling the shots and telling you how to help me, understand?"_

"_Say my name, call me out."_

The statue of Euphemia turned into water and the man lying in pieces let out one last prolonged gurgle as life left him. The stake in his chest must have been used to keep his heart and lungs going, Zapan's power over water had surprising applications. He saw a flicker of light leave the man that blinked out almost instantly. So, Zapan needed direct contact to gather the lights. It would have to be something to keep in mind in the future.

"Lelouch, are you okay? I saw that light jump at you." C.C sounded worried, she didn't want him to be a monster. He didn't know if she wanted a few decades of peace before she thought of ending her life again, or if she was just feeling guilty about his fate, but she was definitely on his side. She thought he could just do nothing while he could make the world so much better.

"Lelouch, talk to me, please." The girl on the recliner was dead, he could see that her chest was not rising anymore and her eyes were dim and staring into the ever-after. The large dim light had belonged to the girl. Zapan had probably devoured her already. He could feel his presence grow and scratch at the back of his head. Zapan was not a patient monster, it seemed. The girl's mind had spared three other children, but had not been strong enough to excuse the other children. Zapan had been hungry and had convinced the girl to hate the other children as well. Her story might have been greatly influenced by Zapan's hunger.

"It's over, C.C. Let's get these kids out of here." C.C looked relieved at his response and moved to address the silent children. She looked calming in her traditional dress and with her usual calm demeanor. She picked up the smallest of the children and took another one's hand. The third one looked him for a second before simply grabbing the hem of her dress. They still had not said a word and none of them were crying, but there was a long suffering look to their eyes. It was either from what Zapan's temporary host had claimed, or just seeing the man in charge of the orphanage be torn apart in front of them. Lelouch carried the dead girl's body. It felt wrong to just leave her there.

Lelouch opted to stay quiet; trying to preserve the state of shock the children were in to get them out of the building without incident. They could hear Zapan in his voice, or see him in the glint of his eye if he interacted with them too much. C.C was surprisingly good with children, but when you live as long as she did, you probably pick up a lot of talents. There was no frost in the hallways as the hurried through to the door they had walked in from. Everything was moist and there were drops of water everywhere, but the frost had disappeared as soon as Zapan's influence subsided. He really didn't want to see what the sleeping hall he had passed through looked like without it. Once they were outside C.C tended to the children that were alive by taking them further from the orphanage, Lelouch set the dead girl on the wet grass and paused to close her eyes with his fingers.

"Zapan, get me to the nearest settlement from here." When he called the monster's name, he suddenly felt his eyes beyond his own and power flood into his mind and limbs. The feeling of omnipotence and euphoria could impair his judgment if he wasn't careful. He stood up and locked eyes with C.C. There was no surprise in her eyes, only sadness and fear. Clearly she didn't know if Zapan had taken control of him or if Lelouch had taken heed of Euphemia's advice and made a deal with Zapan.

"I can use it, C.C. I can make the world a better place…" His fingers had started to glow green. Zapan must have found the nearest settlement, whoever he did it. C.C was shaking her head. It should have been too dark to see her eyes tear up in such vivid detail, but he was no normal human anymore. She had wanted to stop fixing the world, but doing that was the only thing Lelouch was good at. "I'm sorry C.C."

He closed his eyes as he felt his own body blink out of existence, into the aqua light.

* * *

**It felt hard to write this, I literally wrote half of this in the last week. I don't know what it was, but I want to see where this story goes.**

**Check out Edgar Allan Poe's "The city under the sea" to see where the inspiration to make Zapan and this story into what it is came from.  
**

**That is all.  
**

**Crazy Laughter  
**


End file.
